Viktor Vector rubbed his face tiredly as he continued looking over the monitors while Noh sat watching him silently, his eyes unfocused at the revelation that his mind had been hacked to pieces and then put back together like a child's jigsaw puzzle. There really wasn't much more to it. Viktor didn't have any kind of real answers as to what he was looking at, and he couldn't even begin to try. There were complications, and then there were Complications, and the abomination in front of Viktor was definitely the latter.

Shifting uncomfortably, he looked at Noh and said, "I don't really know what to tell you, kid. You hear about this kind of stuff out in the underground. Prototype tech, weird wild shit that the Megas put into people, trying to figure out how to make it work. Bleeding edge, using parts handcrafted in orbital labs and with specs way, way above anything you can find in the streets But it's all prototype for a reason. They're trying to work out the bugs, and usually they're using some poor bastard to do it. And in this case, that poor bastard is you."

Leaning back further, Viktor stared at the ceiling before continuing. "I don't know what to tell you. I really don't. But this is just the tip of the iceberg if what this diagnostic is telling me is true. From what I'm seeing, there's barely any of you left. Putting the whole braincase issue aside, everything from the neck down is completely mechanical. From your bones to your organs, the blood in your veins, the muscles and skin on your body, every last bit of it has been replaced with a cybernetic analog. Some of it's wildly advanced, some of it is just strange in its application. But all of it kind of meshes together into a horrifying amalgam of what a person would look like if they were purpose built in a lab."

He exhaled slowly, the weight of it settling in his expression.

"This is the rough part of the news. All I can tell you for certain is that there's a lot of eddies put into you. A lot of time, a lot of tech. That's not the kind of stuff that we can mess around with. I can't even begin to guess at where to start, and I'm no slouch. I been in this game for a long, long time, so believe me when I say it's bad, because in the end? This is so far over the edge that we're hurtling through the abyss."

Viktor stared at Noh for a moment, and there was something old and haunted in his eyes.

"Whoever did this to you did it with a purpose in mind. A very specific purpose. You were being built for something, kid. And whatever that something was, they pulled out all the stops."

Viktor took a moment to gather his thoughts as Noh seemed to process that. Never in his whole life did he think he'd ever see something like this, not in his chair, under his knife. It was the kind of urban legend you hear in ripper circles, about lost or escaped lab specimens, chock full of rare and expensive tech that nations and governments would kill for.

"If I could give you something to work with, answers, or a clue, or something... well, even then, I don't know if I wanna go and touch this. What you are is dangerous, kid. You're real dangerous. And I don't really know where to go from there." And that was the real tragedy of it all. Vik liked to think he was a good person, but even he had limits, and Noh... he was tempted to kick him out, wipe the files of him ever being there, and blacklisting him, Kiwi, and anyone associated with them. Because this was the real shit, and while rippers were often treated as one of those necessary evils by the powers that be, there were limits to that tolerance.

But that wasn't Vik. He built his practice on being the best provider in Watson and while this landmine was in his chair, he would do his job. He would need to be careful, though. There was doing his professional best, and then there was getting tangled up in this and hoping he wasn't on the list for a long walk off a short bridge. Weighing his thoughts, he came to a decision.

"I will say this. You took some real damage. I can see the signs all over your cyberware. Serious wear, combat damage, fried circuits and buildup in your moving bits, and all manner of dents and divots besides. You're a real mess, I'll give you that much." He said, looking over the information in front of him, "But that's where the bad news ends, because you're fixing yourself. You've got one of the most advanced trauma control systems I think I've ever seen." Viktor paused, then asked curiously, "You've been hungry lately? Like real hungry, starving almost."

Noh, having sat in silence, just nodded. Viktor hummed in response, not blaming him for still processing the revelation that he was pretty much a brain in a jar. "You... You're gonna be that way. As long as you've got nutrients in your system, your trauma control system will keep fixing you."

"What does that mean, Vik? All that shit doesn't mean anything to me." The words were tense, quiet. All the teasing and smirking and bravado was gone, and all that was left was a cool monotone that Viktor did not like.

"It means your body is building itself back up." Vik replied quickly, cutting him off before he could spiral. "From what I'm seeing here, so long as that brain pod in your head is in one piece, even if they flatline you, even if your cyberheart stops, even if your synth lungs stop breathing, even if you bleed all of your hydraulic blood out, so long as that system is running, eventually it'll pick you back up. It's using one hell of an advanced nanoprinter to assemble you one cell at a time, and seems smart enough to start at the most damaged bits and work its way down."

Noh watched Viktor for a long minute as they were chewing on what the horrifying revelations he just received were. "So," he said finally, "you don't know what I am or where I came from. You don't even know how I was put together. But hey, if I get my chest blown open and my arms and legs chopped off, eventually they'll grow back, right? Like some kind of fucking lizard?" Noh snorted, but the sound was distant, unamused, hard and unhappy. It was the sound of someone who didn't know what to think about what they'd just heard.

"Look, Noh," he said, grabbing the bearded man's attention, "This is a lot to take in, I know, but I'm not done and I need you to listen to me, and listen very carefully. You have so much cyber in you, you should be a raving, stark foaming at the mouth lunatic. Cyberpsycho doesn't even begin to cover half of what you should be processing, and what little is left in your head should be cooking from the raw load like scop on a griddle. Yet somehow, whatever's left of you, seems to be handling the load. That assessment you took, the Humanity Index exam, came back telling me you were operating in the green. For now."

"What the hell does 'for now' mean, Viktor? You saying I'm burning out?" Noh snapped, and Vik leaned back slightly at the wild glower in the lanky borg's eyes.

"No. You've got all the signs, the classic ones, that you should be completely over edge, but your neural load isn't showing it. Your nerves are intact. You're not ranting about delusions of grandeur or having obsessive ideations or suffering extreme paranoia. All the usual hallmarks of the insanity the kind of load you're under should be putting on you aren't appearing, and I don't know what to say to that. All I know is that whatever is inside of you, whatever is keeping you together, and however it works, it's beyond me. I could do a little bit of work and fix some of what's broken, but..."

"But at the end of the day there's nothing you can do to really help. Then what the fuck good are you, Vik?" Noh growled, practically squaring up, but this wasn't Vik's first rodeo with an irate borg. The older man gave him a pinning stare, as he replied just as sharp.

"Don't shoot the messenger, son. I wasn't done." He said, tone hard, and Noh leaned back, out of his face, "What I'm saying is that I have no idea how you're staying above board, but if you start spiralling, you could very well tip yourself over anyway. You do that, if half this shit does what I think it does, you're going to kill a lot of people before someone puts you down. Do you understand?"

Noh glared at him mulishly, and Viktor sighed as he rolled up some of the more recent footage of the last milspec borg to go off the deep end. He'd lost his shit in Japantown after his girl got taken by Strommers and turned into a flesh puppet. He chromed way the hell up, and hadn't even made it out of TC territory before the load fried his brain. What followed was a three hour chase through the city as the man went from block to block, chopping people up like a demented buzzsaw.

"Noh, listen to me. I'm not your enemy, but if you don't keep yourself in check, this is you. Now I'll ask again, do you understand?" Vik asked patiently, as Noh slowly nodded his head. "Good. Because... despite my better judgement, I want you to come in on the regular. Misty is a registered therapist, and I want to keep a diagnostic breakdown of what's going on internally for you. Monitor you for instability, see if we can't keep you from going down the bad path."

"Why? What do you care, Vik? From the way it sounds, just being around me is puttin' your head on the block." Noh asked, but the defensiveness, the anger, in his tone was gone. Or at least better hidden, which was good enough for now.

"Because I can't in good conscience leave you out there like a time bomb waiting to go off. Normally I'd be telling you to chrome down, take some of this out, get some low impact civware hooked in to reduce the stress, but your pieces and parts are all custom jobs. There isn't any replacing it. Just trying might throw the delicate balance of spinning plates going all over, so monitoring and maintaining is the best option." Vik said, as he pulled up more information, forwarding it to Noh's HUD. The files clicked open, and he was surprised to find it was largely a bevy of pamphlets and booklets, mostly talking about cyberpsychosis, the signs, and what to look out for.

"I'm guessing you want me to read these?" Noh asked, tiredly, and Vik nodded.

"Back to front. You start seeing any of these signs, I want you to call me. Doesn't matter when or where. Even if you just suspect you're experiencing any, give me a call. You have such a high load right now that I'm worried any bit of deviation, any inkling of a collapse, will cascade exponentially into a full blown episode." Vik said, as he forwarded an appointment schedule and a list of medications. "I'm also going to put you on a preventative. It's the same one they give military borgs, a potent mood stabilizer, designed to mitigate the worst effects of overloading your neurons. That one I need to charge you for, though, they aren't cheap or easy to get, but they will help keep you from going off the deep end. I'll give you a month up front, on an IOU, but after that-"

"No free meals, I know. I'll see what I can do, alright?" Noh sighed, and Vik had heard that tone before in so many other chrome junkies. He turned to look at Noh with that same hard look.

"Don't fuck around Noh. Not with this. You're Kiwi's friend, don't make her put you down. Or worse, you put her down, and have to live with it. Do you get me, son?" That seemed to break through to him, Vik could see, and Noh nodded. It would have to be good enough.

Later on, when Noh was gone and he gave Kiwi the truncated version of what he found (Noh, for whatever reason, hadn't objected to him cluing her in, but he could tell even she had no idea the extent of his internal mechanics), he had decided to do a little research on his own. He knew better than to ask leading questions or post any kind of specs on the net, but he had a few contacts he could talk to anonymously that he'd built up over the years. Most of them were recluses, and the places he posted in were as old as the net itself, predating even Bartmoss' madness in some cases, but the secrecy and anonymity made it that responses could be delayed for days, weeks, or even months.

It was the best he could do, for now. The truth was that he still had his trepaditions about digging into this particular rabbit hole, but there was a part of him, a big part, that burned with the kind of curiosity that had put him on the medical track to begin with. Despite all sense to the contrary, he kind of wanted to know, and if it meant he could help some poor gonk, all the better. It would help ally some of the guilt, too, that had been chewing on him.

Because he hadn't told Noh or Kiwi the whole truth of what he found. For all the damage that afflicted the tall borg, it paled in comparison to the things that were missing, and there was so much. Organs for certain, but that was obvious and unimportant. No, the big issue was what had been removed from the brain. The memory center was gone, the inhibition center was heavily mutilated, and the part of the brain that made you feel things like fear, hate, and most importantly, love? That had been infected with a nanocell tumor the size of a golf ball, and he had no idea what that could have been doing to the man in the interim.

He meant what he said. Noh should be a vegetable at best, or perhaps more mercifully, just dead, outright, but he was still alive. But for how long? Viktor couldn't say. Because the nanocell tumors were spreading, slowly, in fractions of fractions, but they were. And when they got big enough... Vik didn't know how much of Noh would be left.


000


Noh followed Kiwi silently, a ghost on the streets of Watson, face cold and somber with the revelations that Vik had dropped on him. On them, really, and to Kiwi had made a sick kind of sense now that all the pieces were being put together. She still hadn't processed the severity of just what Vik had been implying, and that wasn't what she was thinking about, but rather, she was thinking about the ill-fated and, if she were being totally honest, completely fucked gig.

Faraday's job sending her out into the wasteland, to go and intercept a random convoy, all to go and retrieve what was ostensibly a custom-built killbot with a human face. She hadn't forgotten how sparse he'd been with the details of the job, even more than his usual circumspection, not that it mattered in the end. She suspected his other team fell afoul of the Raffen just like hers did. It was unusual for them to have been out in those numbers and oddly convenient that they were just in the right place at the right time to hit them right as they were least expecting it. The probably tortured it out of those poor fucks, but she wasn't discounting the idea that they might have been Faraday's 'plan C' and just jumped the gun looking to triple their payday.

He was snakey like that, and she had to admit, after what she saw, Noh was a hell of a prize. He'd want to get his claws into the man no matter what, if he thought he could. Hedging his bets just seemed like the play, right up until one of those bets decided to edge out the other two. Of course that was all speculation, she didn't have the proof and if anything did exist it was probably sitting on a charred corpse strapped into one of those burned out wrecks they'd left behind.

As for why he went to the lengths he did? It was obvious enough. If it wasn't the bevy of experimental tech crammed into his body then it would be for the raw utility a custom-made killing machine capable of what Noh had managed to accomplish. Even as banged up as he apparently was, the guy was a walking blender. More than that, with his brain functionally wiped Faraday could put whatever he wanted into his head. Perfectly loyal bodyguard that didn't have the ability to say no? Enforcer that you never had to worry about being bribed or coerced? Assassin that could blend in perfectly right up until the killing blow? The possibilities were endless.

Faraday would have spared no expense, and the only thing that seemed to stop him from dumping a fortune into one of the premier wetwork teams out of the Afterlife was the time constraints. Hence her gonk ass getting rolled out into the middle of nowhere to pop a convoy that, for all intents and purposes never would have made it anywhere near Night City, getting into the shit, quite literally, and ending up with her tied up in some jackass's trunk.

It almost killed her. Almost, but not quite.

And now here she was, walking around with his prize. She was sure it would burn him up though, if he figured it out. She suspected that it was in her best interest, not to mention Noh's, that Faraday not find out the details of the situation until there was well and truly no other choice. She was there to crack a convoy. Convoy got summarily cracked. He owed her for that, and if anything else went tits up, that wasn't her problem. If he wanted her to care he should have paid her more, because that's not how things shook out. No, she was the one who had the cards. She was the one with the leverage, and fuck Faraday anyway.

She didn't know if he set her up, but you never could with his type. The man only cared about Number One, from start to finish. But he was a well-paying narcissist, and money was the lubrication that made the wheels of society turn, so long as he paid his part and didn't try to fuck her too bad she'd still pick up his calls in the future.

After all, as it turned out, Noh was a real diamond in the rough. She'd had some trepidations. They'd been coming back and going as she pondered whether or not to really commit, but... So long as she could keep him away from getting picked up by the Megas, he'd be a very valuable asset to her. If things got too hot, she could always pull a runner but a little biosculpting and a few altered biometric transmitters and nobody would know him from any other chrome-dome borg so the risk was acceptable.

Vik had gone in deep looking for bugs or transceiver tags and she would do a once over of his internal ICE and call it a day. Besides, she knew he liked her. Hell, he fucked her into the bed not too long ago, (and she was definitely going to be taking advantage of that tonight) and she was reasonably sure he wouldn't object. Plus she could drag Lucy along and see if the barely legal Eurostalker was of any use with something a little more subtle than carpet bombing a corporate host system. It would be a good way to find out if the neokitsch nightingale had any holes Kiwi needed to patch.

She had to admit, if just to herself, that she had been concerned that Noh wouldn't take the revelations about what his insides looked like particularly well. She knew she wouldn't have, but Noh, aside from being a little more taciturn, didn't seem to be falling to pieces over it either. That was something else Kiwi appreciated about him. He wasn't the type to get up his own ass about it, going all 'oh no, woe is me'. There were enough of those sob stories that seemed to be the backstory of every Tom, Dick, and idiot that wandered the streets of Night City.

Noh was practical. Maybe a little shaken, but nothing a good fuck and a good meal wouldn't get out of the way. She wanted him sharp for when she got into it with Faraday in a day or two, once she got her bearings back. She had no doubt there would be an issue, somewhere, but having her own hustle to match the gangoons the four-eyed fuck had would do wonders for her confidence. He liked to outsource to the Animals, and while they were intimidating, very few of them were a match for a real borg.

She had the makings of a crew here, and that had its own potential. Lucy was following behind her like a gosling, much like Noh had been, and she had decided she would keep her. For all that Lucy had uh... hunted her down, for lack of a better term, had been proof enough that the girl had skill, and overall wasn't a bad netrunner. Despite her annoyance at how things shook out, she also could admit she saw a little of herself in the scrappy girl. From what she'd learned from their talks on the net, she had been in the game for a while,  but was blind to the more nuanced aspects of the job.

Kiwi really wasn't one to take on apprentices, but... well, Lucy could be useful in her own ways. Having a backup netrunner could be useful, especially on some of the harder jobs. It was a rare enough profession as it was and teamwork made the dream work and all that drek. So for now, she would let the girl crash on her couch. It wasn't like she planned to put Noh there and she barely used the thing anyway, preferring to either lounge in bed or in her ice bath.

Kiwi sighed, reaching into her jacket and pulling out a cigarette, slipping it into the vents of her mask and lighting it up. It masked the raw sewage smell that always seemed to permeate Watson in the middle of the summer. NC did a shit job at garbage pickup on a good day, and it was even worse with the heat congealing everything. Half the people who smoked did it just to give their poor, abused lungs something else to process besides the stink of rotting food and shit.

Why did she miss Night City again?

Ugh, it'd been too long since she'd had a decent coffin nail, and the burning ash in her lungs felt refreshing. She'd missed it on the road, the two packs she'd brought with her lost when she was stripped and the shitty hand-rolled Navajos she'd found on the Shivs were nothing to write home about. They did in a pinch but nothing beat the brand name stuff.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught Lucy eyeballing her cigs, to which she let out an amused huff. The platinum-haired girl flinched a bit, but said nothing. 'Jesus,' Kiwi thought to herself, 'for a seasoned cyberpunk the slip of a netrunner was certainly jumpy.'

It was a bitter thought, but in retrospect she could see why. The girl had been desperate enough to roll the dice and show up at her apartment with her hat in hand and no backup plan. For all she knew Kiwi was just the handle for some kind of honeytrap pimp looking to groom a new joytoy, and still she came. Now she was at her mercy, and Kiwi had admittedly been somewhat distracted by other things, many of which were net-related now that that fucking Jammer was gone.

It was a little cruel, and while Kiwi was into that, it was a later thing. For now she just sighed and offered Lucy a cigarette of her own. She did chuckle when Lucy jumped a bit and almost dropped it as an arc of electricity sparked across Kiwi's thumb and forefinger, lighting it seamlessly.

"Enjoy it. You're gonna be working for the next one." She said, almost sighing, and Lucy perked up.

"That mean what I think it means?" The younger woman asked hopefully, and Kiwi nodded.

"Yeah. Couch is yours, provided you work for it." If nothing else, a little kindness paid dividends later and it cost her very little. It wasn't like she was paying for her utilities. She just hacked the damn things, like a good netrunner should.

"And where does that leave me, Ki?" Noh chimed in, glancing back at her. The blonde just gave him a flat look, and he nodded. "Right, right. How silly of me." He hummed, before going back to his brooding. Men.

All in all, things were really coming up Kiwi.


000


Staring down the barrel of a gun, Kiwi decided that perhaps, maybe, possibly, she had been a bit too optimistic. Behind her she could almost hear Noh’s teeth grinding as he was held in a situation similar to hers, if, you know, worse what with the crackling, glowing anti-borg ASPDS rifle pressed to his spine and the Soviet hand cannon shoved against the base of his skull. Or in the case of Lucy, an Umbra tucked right into the sweet spot where a shot would blow her internal organs into their external setting.

What was even worse than that though? She never saw it coming, not from Faraday. She knew he was a big wheel over in Pacifica, but she hadn’t internalized just what that meant until today, when she spotted some of the nastiest solos in the biz stepping out from the alcoves. Off the top of her head, she spotted Joe ‘The Shroom’ Shizaki wielding the railgun pressed against the small of Noh’s back, along with his partner in crime Victor Montego, a cartel sicario that had made a name carving up a number of big name gang lords over the last couple years. Flanking Faraday himself were the Kansai Couplets, two siblings that were Tyger Claw Oni, their special anti-borg hunter killers fresh off the latest gang war with the ‘strommers, and bringing up the rear was a titan of a man that Kiwi only knew by reputation, standing at seven foot six and a wall of muscle, the Maine Man, his crusher at a low ready. Not that he’d need it with those oversized gorilla arms of his.

They had gotten the drop on them and it wasn’t even particularly hard. Between Noh being lost in his own head for the entire walk home and Lucy half asleep, she was the only one with her head on and in the now, and she had been too busy getting high off her own supply to notice the less-than-stealthy tail that had been following them for the last two levels of the megabuilding. The fact that the elevator had been unable to take them higher due to a ‘maintenance issue’ should have set off warning signs on its own, but she hadn’t even noticed her home security had been bypassed in the process.

And now it was too late for it to matter. Noh had snapped to it as soon as he realized shit was getting real, but he barely managed to take three steps before flying face first into the wall, a digitized scream of anguish pouring out of his mouth as he sparked and seized. Faraday had some kind of device in his hand that he’d pointed at the borg and with the flick of a switch shut the big man down entirely.

“Much better, don’t you think? We don’t want anyone doing anything regrettable, now do we?” He’d laughed as Noh had a seizure on the ground, body twisting into a horrifying rictus as Kiwi forced herself to watch on impassively, not willing to show even a shred of vulnerability in the face of her relatively new partner going through what looked like a Short Circuit of some kind, but the total shutdown looked more like a Cyberware Malfunction, maybe both. “He certainly is a violent one, though, isn’t he Kiwi? If I didn’t know any better I’d say he was coming for me right then, wasn’t he?”

“You did drop in unannounced, Faraday.” She said calmly, glaring at him from the side, her voice modulation set to a flat, almost bored tone. They watched Noh writhe on the ground for a minute longer, and Kiwi just glared impassively, even as Lucy looked away. “Is there a point to this, or are we just going to watch you cook my huscle for fun?” She eventually bit out, and Faraday snorted.

“Now now, if I didn’t know any better I would say you were worried about the dear borg. But yes, it is necessary. After all, you know as well as I do that he’s lethal enough when properly motivated.” The four-eyed fixer said with an almost bored tone. “This is just a little bit of insurance to make sure he understands that I won’t tolerate any more little outbursts.” He rolled a cylindrical device across his fingers, one that made Kiwi’s eyes narrow as she puzzled over the device. It looked like a manual toggle of some kind, and it wasn’t hard to see that every seizure was associated with him pressing the trigger on it.

Which had its own implications. Noh was a byzantine mess when it came to trying to get through his Cybersecurity, and she’d tried a few times. It wasn’t that he was particularly difficult to get through to. It was that there wasn’t anything there to get through in general. Aside from his wireless connectivity centers everything was detached. She’d seen it before in corpo execs, a biological airgap system meant to stop just that, but the fact that he’d had it and was still flopping around like that said something else to her.

This thing, whatever it was, was mechanical, and he was going to kill Noh with it if she didn’t stop him. But she’d have to be careful, because Faraday was the exact same kind of manipulator that would hone in on it and go out of his way to do just that just to make a point.

“If you break him you buy him, Faraday. And the carpet too.” She said, almost drolly, turning to him. “I still have payments on this one, you know?” The words pulled Faraday’s attention from Noh and to her, finally making him ease off on the switch in his hand.

“My, the balls on you.” He said with a low chuckle, “I never took you as the protective type. You’ve only known him for what, a week? Less? And yet here you are, digging a hole for him all the same.” Leaning back on her couch, the fixer played with the switch in his hand for a moment longer, before finally flicking something on the device, making the writhing electricity that had been all but crawling out of Noh to finally cease.

It didn’t stop some of the Faraday’s own goons from picking the man up, who hung limply between them from cuffing him with Borg Locks and shoving a Crusher into his throat. They’d been piling in at a steady pace, locking down the little room with a press of bodies, and if she wasn’t nervous enough before, she was now.

Noh groaned in pain as he lolled his head, and Kiwi forced herself to look away, her head shifting back to Faraday. She tried not to look at the mercenaries and goons in the room, tried not to let Faraday know she was afraid of them, but Lucy gave the game away all the same, and she worried about how Noh would react once he started getting his bearings back.

The thing that got her though, was that aside from the Maine Man, none of these solos were on Faraday’s payroll normally. None of them were worth the expense of intimidating two no-names and a borg, no matter what Faraday might be playing at, and that was what bothered her the most. These people had their own crews, had their own connections, and Faraday? Faraday was on the outs. He was a fixer from the Time of the Red that hadn’t adjusted well to the sudden loss of power that the re-opening of trade routes and the final radiation scrubs had ushered in, and had been trying to pick up the scraps ever since.

He didn’t have the pull to drag these mercs in, not for something so small, so it made her wonder just what the play here was. Intimidation? Clearly, but was he really that petty, that spiteful to spend what was probably a million eddies in hired help sitting in this room. Granted, that didn’t change much when it came to the reality of the situation though. With his ability to functionally shut down Noh, the only real credible combat threat she had, like he was nothing, had been enough of a message.

Or so she thought, in that vaguely hysterical sort of way. She wondered if she should be pleased that Faraday thought she was worth this level of investment just to give her a scare, because she was absolutely fucking terrified, make no mistake. She knew what these people were, and more terrifyingly, Noh and Lucy didn’t. Which just meant that if either of them got cute, all of them were going to die, and die violently. Some more than others, maybe, but she was absolutely sure of that.

The best part? They all seemed to know who they were dealing with. Lucy was nothing without her hacking, and the same was true for Kiwi, much as she hated to say it. Noh, on the other hand, was something else. They came loaded for borg and it couldn’t have been more obvious why. If anyone was going to need to go down immediately, it would be the tall man with an increasingly pissed off look on his face as his brain rebooted but they had him dead to rights anyway.

They weren’t taking any chances either. Kiwi was now face to face with someone she thought she might have, possibly, potentially, underestimated. Faraday, the so-called washed-up Pacifica Fixer sat impassively on her couch like a king taking court, and in his hundred thousand eddie suit, he might as well had been. Looking every bit the imperious prick that he was, he looked at her from down his nose even though she was the one standing, and yet all the same he made her feel somehow lesser.

She hated that so goddamn much that she found herself seething inside, but she knew that if she lost her shit even a little bit Noh would probably lose what little self-control he had left and get them all flatlined, so instead she grit her teeth, and with a tight, sharp voice, she hissed out, “So what can I do for you Faraday? I’m… surprised to see you here. In my apartment. On my couch. I thought your usual M.O. is to make me come to you, not the other way around.”

“Oh? Yes, I can see how this is something of a shock, Kiwi. Almost as much as mine was, really, when you failed to contact me the moment you were back in town to report on the results of your mission.” He sneered casually, before his eyes went over her, then her two companions. “Not quite the team I sent you out with, are they. Am I to assume the others met an unfortunate and untimely demise?”

“You mean the three gonks you saddled me with? Those guys? The ones who died pretty much immediately? Yes, yes they did.” Kiwi said, crossing her arms with a scoff. “I hope you didn’t cancel the warranty on them. I’m afraid they didn’t make it back.”

Faraday hummed at that, as if he were contemplating it, before visibly dismissing it. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. The wasteland can be… unforgiving at best. And you didn’t encounter the other team I had operating out there either, did you?” He asked, but they both knew the answer to that one. Kiwi shook her head anyway. “I didn’t think so. What a pity. More to the point, though, I suppose this seething mass of cyberware was the passenger I sent you to break out?”

“Doesn’t matter if it is. I got hired to crack the convoy. It was cracked.” Kiwi snorted, “Or did you forget ‘you don’t need the details, just do the job I tell you to’? Because that’s what you told me when I asked, Faraday.” The grain of truth was there, because he really hadn’t told her to do more than hack the handful of transport vehicles. Everything else was really just a happy accident.

“That is… true. Annoyingly.” Faraday ground out as he leaned back, staring at the woman as he thought. “Still, I find this to be a less than ideal situation. You should have contacted me immediately once you were back in range, while things could be managed. Making me chase you down was bad form, Kiwi. I expected better of you.”

“Of fuck right off. If it wasn’t for your ‘prisoner’ here my ass would have been raped, eaten and the remains stripped for parts in a Raffen Shiv camp right now, and you’d have nothing.” Kiwi said dismissively. “Those idiots you sent me with were so sub-par they actively hindered anything I could do and I wound up Plugged and tossed in a fucking trunk. I was just getting back from having my ripper remove the jammer they rammed into me.”

“I see.” Faraday said, slowly, “Did you have this ripper… look at him?” Faraday asked carefully, “It would be… unfortunate, if someone got too good of a look at him. It could be problematic for both of us, you understand.”

“I’m not an idiot Faraday. Aside from getting him deloused, my guy knew better than to go digging.” The lie was easy eddies for her. She would never admit to getting the full diagnostic on Noh, not if she didn’t want the four-eyed fuck to crawl up her ass. “He’s a professional, not unlike how I had assumed you were. Color me dis-a-fucking-pointed.”

“Oh? Are you blaming me for the hurdles you ran into in the field?” He asked, almost drolly. “You are paid to do a job, the details are up to you to handle, so long as you accomplish the objective.”

“Yeah? Then explain to me how I didn’t, because it really sounds like you’re trying to say that, Faraday.” Kiwi said with a cold inflection in her voice. “I did what I was hired to do. Your hired help shit the bed, your other team failed to do their part of the job, and despite all that I made it back alive and in one piece to tell you what happened.” Her words were frigid as she stalked forward, heedless of the blades that buzzed tantalizingly close to her neck. “Then you show up in my home to lecture me about it?”

“You took the package for yourself. That was the whole point of the job, or did that escape you? You had a simple job to do, and the assistance I generously provided you should have been more than enough for you to clear any hurdles that got in the way. Instead, here it stands glaring at me in some puerile attempt to intimidate me. It’s clear that it’s no longer Viable, which means you stole my package for your own use.” He said, matching her tone. “Which means you owe me, Kiwi. It doesn’t matter that it was entirely incidental, it’s spoiled now, which is going to put a number of other operations it was needed for on hold while I try to salvage something from this debacle.”

“‘It’ has a name, chucklefuck.” Noh growled behind her, finally having recovered enough to stand on his own two feet, if just barely, and Kiwi had to hide a wince as Faraday’s eyes shifted to stare at him. “If you’re gonna sit there talking about me like I ain’t here, then we’re gonna have issues, Four-eyes.”

“Noh, shut up.” Kiwi snapped, but it was too late. With a movement of Faraday’s hand the men restraining Noh forced him upright, pressing a second shotgun to the back of his head to keep him from doing anything inadvisable.

“Noh? It has a name now?” Faraday asked, as if the concept was almost entirely foreign to him. “Good god, Kiwi. What a waste.” He sighed, and stood, leaving the couch to circle the tall man, and Noh met his gaze with an even glare. Pressing a hand to Noh’s cheek in an almost touch, he stared at the tall man in disappointment. “You know, in an ideal world, you would have been dropped off pristine and ready to fulfil a glorious purpose. Oh yes, there were such plans for you, my chromed out friend.” Faraday sighed, a small frown on his face. “Unfortunately it seems like your time with Kiwi has ruined you. You do understand that you’re a tool, yes? It’s a miracle that there’s anything left in that head capable of forming coherent thoughts, much less an opinion on something.”

“What’s your point, scav-fucker?” Noh spit the words, as the man in question looped him again. “I’m not some thing for you to boss around, and even if I was, I’m pretty sure I’d just stab your gonk ass just as soon as do anything you tried to tell me to.”

There was a moment, a single moment, when the bevy of goons tensed, as Noh barely restrained himself, his eyes jumping to her, trapped between the guillotine blades and Faraday, so close he could reach out and pop his head off like a cork. Kiwi desperately shook her head no at him, barely moving from her spot, all her bravado gone as the fixer watched him like a piece of bacteria under a microscope.

“Charming.” Faraday finally said as he made his way back towards her, stopping in front of her. “He’s well and truly beyond salvaging. I hope you’re pleased, Kiwi. He’s good for little more than spare parts at this point.” The words had Noh’s hackles rising, and Kiwi could see it happen in real time. She had to head this off before he did something she’d regret.

“Noh, amp down. I’ve got this.” She said to him, before turning to Faraday, “And antagonizing him is beneath you, Faraday. He is what he is.” She sighed, annoyed and agitated. “You obviously want something, if you’re willing to go through this whole dog-and-pony show. Why are you actually here?”

“Now that is the question, isn’t it, Kiwi? Why am I here, wasting my time with you when the easiest solution would have been to have you all shot and left to rot in a dumpster somewhere, another tragic and meaningless statistic?” Faraday laughed, as he slid into her personal space. “Because you owe me, Kiwi. You all owe me, for the trouble, for the cost, and for the lip.”

“Gentlemen?” he said leadingly, and then Kiwi blinked as the mantis blades retracted. A moment later she saw stars as his backhand cracked across her cheek with a resounding crunch, sending her to the floor. He followed it by a vicious kick to her stomach. Noh growled, struggling against the hustle holding his arms, but the press of the two guns had him freeze. Kiwi let out a pained gasp from the floor as he was forced to watch. “Because one, don’t think you can tell me what is or isn’t beneath me. You’re nothing Kiwi, just another piece of gutter trash that does what I tell them to when I tell them to. If I tell you to jump, you jump, if I tell you to bleed, you bleed, if I tell you to die? Well, you get the picture. You’re nothing more, and nothing less.” He circled around, before pressing the sole of his shoe to the back of her head, forcing her forehead against the ground. “And two, even more importantly, you owe me for taking him from me. He’s useless to me now, and you'll be paying me back for the loss I’m about to incur because of it.”

“As for you-” He said, snapping his gaze to the enraged borg as he did everything in his power not to outright assault the arrogant fucker, his teeth grinding so hard even Faraday could hear it, “I’ll get some value out of you yet. We’ll see if something can be salvaged from this fiasco. I’ll be in touch soon with a bill on how much you owe me, and what you’ll be doing to pay me back for the trouble.” He sighed dramatically, as Kiwi tried to remember how to breathe. “Pick her up.”

Kiwi found herself hauled to her feet in the iron grip of the two Oni once more, presented to him like a prized kill. His hand snaked out to grab her by the chin. “Look at me, Kiwi, come on, focus… focus… there! Now that I have your attention, I’m going to explain how it’s going to be. You owe me. You will continue working for me until that debt is paid, and you will do so happily and enthusiastically.” He said, and he forced her to look him in the eye, the left side of her face already swelling. “Do you understand Kiwi?”

Dazed, Kiwi tried to say something, but it came out garbled. Faraday sighed with frustration, before turning to the others, a put-upon look on his face. “Do you see what I have to deal with?” He asked, before his fist collided with Kiwi’s abused stomach again. She let out a piteous groan as she tried and failed to puke up what little was in her stomach through her mask. “Let's try this again. Do. You. Understand?”

“Y-yes…” Kiwi groaned out, barely, her voice feeble. Faraday nodded, and she was dropped unceremoniously onto the ground, where she curled up around her abused stomach. Faraday watched her impassively before turning to Noh and Lucy, who had done her level best to vanish from the room. Instead, Noh met his eyes with an icy hatred that Faraday could only sneer at.

“You’ll be paying as well. Plus extra for the attitude, ‘Noh’.” He said the name like it was something he scraped off his boot. “Do you understand?”

“Fuck you.” He hissed at the four-eyed fixer. “You’ll be paying for that. I promise you, Faraday.” The words were like acid, but Faraday just snorted a laugh. He shook his head, not quite willing to put himself into arm’s reach, but unimpressed all the same.

“You just… don’t learn, do you? So allow me to correct you, like the mutt you are.” In an instant Noh was screaming and seizing again as the goons holding him struggled to keep him up despite the violent shaking. Arcs of electricity crawled over his body and streams of lighting jumped from the top of his mouth to the bottom as he flopped around like a fish on dry land. Smoke drifted from his eyes, nose and mouth as Faraday pressed the button over and over again, cranking up the voltage as he listened to the man scream in uncontrollable agony, so much so that his joints started to glow from the heat. The light from the shocks cast shadows across the room from how much juice was pouring out of him, whatever leash the fixer was tugging at completely overloading his system. Finally, after what felt like hours, he released the button, and Noh slammed into the ground barely alive, much less conscious.

“The bill just went up again for his lip. For all of you.” The words were ice cold, as the two women, one from the ground, the other having stood very still ever since this whole nightmare began, stared at the smoking borg in contrasting horror. “I see you understand the position you’re in. The position all of you are in. You have no idea what her,” He spit on Kiwi’s prone form, “little fuckup cost me and my organization. The funds, the planning, the equipment, all of it gone to waste, all because she couldn’t just die like a good little pawn.”

“Useless fucking trash, all of you.” With that parting shot, Faraday strode out of the apartment. None of them moved, paralyzed by fear, by pain, or just outright paralyzed, even as the rest of the goons left with them. The last one out, the big borg with the blond flat-top, stopped at the door, looking back, clearly unhappy with something. He chewed on his thoughts for a moment as the three stared at him from their supine positions, and he looked at each in turn. Glancing out the door, as if looking for something, and then finding it, he focused in on Kiwi.

“This was nothin’ personal. Just biz. Remember that.” He rumbled in a deep baritone, and then he was gone.

Eventually Lucy gathered herself up enough to go fish out a pair of BounceBacks from the medical kit under the sink, but it was barely enough to get the badly beaten woman and the heavily tased man into some semblance of function again. Both were in rough shape as the small woman did her best to drag Kiwi onto the couch, followed by Noh, feeding them another BounceBack in the process, this one showing much better results. Slowly, the two recovered, and Lucy, despite not being either of their biggest fan right that moment, glad that she wasn’t stuck alone with a pair of crippled runners.

Laying there next to Kiwi, Noh couldn’t help but seethe, as Lucy got her stuff and made herself scarce. Kiwi herself had been silent through the entire episode, and if he hadn’t been barely a foot from her, he wouldn’t have noticed the pained look on her face, or the tears beaded in the corners of her eyes. She was far away now, her mind elsewhere, the toll of the fixer’s surprise visit had had on her, and how shaken she was by the whole thing. There was something there, he knew. You don’t get people like Kiwi without some trauma, though once more, the hows and whys of how he knew what he knew sitting in the back of his brain, even as he psychoanalyzed her.

Faraday had done them both an injury. Lucy escaped unscathed, but was clearly shaken. Kiwi would recover. Eventually. So would he, as the numbness faded from his limbs, but neither of them would ever forget this. No, they would remember all of it, and one day, some day, he would make that four-eyed fuck eat those words, right before he slit his throat from ear to ear. Because it was like the old saying went, never do an enemy a small injury. Noh didn’t know who said it, but there was a truth there, and he would remember.

He and Kiwi both.