I was studying the chemistry shard Viktor gave me on a makeshift display I’d constructed last week from a collection of discarded broken datapads I’d scavenged from various dumpsters. It took some creative engineering to get them all synced despite their differing manufacturers, each with proprietary brand-name ports. The synced screens may not have been the prettiest, but the display was large and effective.
“A chemical reaction’s rate is governed by the interplay of activation energy, reactant concentrations, and the overall energy profile of the system. In kinetic analysis, variations in temperature, pressure, and catalyst presence can significantly alter the collision frequency and orientation of molecules, thus affecting the speed at which products form. By manipulating these variables—within acceptable thresholds—one can direct the reaction toward slow, incremental conversion or a swift, high-energy transition.”
I looked up at the ceiling as I considered applications I experienced every day from CHOOH2 to gunpowder and grenades. Then I considered the city’s power grid and its sources. The solar power being gathered in orbit was in truth fueled by a massive exothermic reaction 93 million miles away. In local power plants, CHOOH2 was burned en masse, and fusion reactors tried their best to imitate the sun. Cars ran, industry turned, information flowed, and civilization and life itself survived due to the equations before me.
An alert popped up in the top right of my display. Irritably, I dismissed it. I was busy.
My mind spun onto less grand, but equally interesting applications. Various chemicals I’d seen throughout the city ran through my mind along with the chemical formulas displayed on the packaging. Different combinations along with the resulting reactions and product, both with and without agitation, were quickly estimated as I took notes and made calculations on my cyberdeck via the large display. Soon, I had ideas for explosive combinations, along with a few sketched-out designs for shaped charges and time-release mechanisms for the reactants.
Another alert popped up. Frustrated by repeated interruptions, I dismissed it, then disabled alerts entirely.
I took a moment to regather my thoughts. The mechanism for introducing a fluid reactant needed to take into account fluid flow and mixing rates if I wanted to get the right reaction. Calculations took form in my notes next to different designs as I considered partial differentials and reactant dispersal rates. Reaction curves passed through my mind as I thought through derivatives of concentration over time.
By the time I was done creating a design, sunlight was once more filtering into the room through the closed metal shutters. I now had the design for a shaped charge with a timed delay and variable power which could be made using only relatively easy to acquire chemicals. It would take a bit of work to make the two final reactants, but I was pretty sure I could do it. I should be able to use this to collapse the entrances to the building, leaving just the small hole in the wall and the windows which already had sturdy metal shutters.
I stretched my hands over my head, trying to work out the crick in my neck. A flicker on one of the linked screens drew an irritated tsk. Now that I was done with the design, a malaise started to cast a shadow on my mind and body as my lack of sleep began to catch up with me.
The sounds of the city filtered into the silent building, gunshots and sirens, advertisements, and roaring engines, broken only by the gentle rhythmic sounds of my breaths, secure in their solitude.
Wait. Isn’t there something missing?
I remembered the alerts that I’d dismissed, but my tired mind was slow to figure out what was wrong.
Breaths… I can only hear my own breaths… Shit!
I spun on my stool and looked at the girl lying on the floor unmoving. With hurried steps, I rushed over to her despite knowing what I’d find.
She was cold to the touch. No pulse.
I looked at the alerts I’d ignored. The first alert was from around five hours ago notifying me of increasing intracranial pressure. The second alert was from just over three hours ago letting me know she had gone into cardiac arrest. An intracranial bleed from her concussion had crushed her brain. I sat back on my heels and rubbed my face with both hands, frustrated with myself.
Again! Fucking again!
I got caught up working on something and ignored everything else… Fucking hell!
I closed my eyes and, with my palm, hit myself on the forehead with every word as I repeated a sentence I’d said to myself many times before, “PAY!”
“ATTENTION!”
“TO!”
The sound of flesh hitting flesh echoed loudly in the deathly quiet room.
“YOUR!”
I just kept making stupid mistakes.
“ALERTS!”
After a moment, having drained some of my rage, and now feeling more sad and resigned than anything, I softly hit myself once more on the forehead with my palm.
Fuck.
I sighed and looked back at the corpse while rubbing at the red mark I’d made.
Well… Okay… Alright… Nothing I can do now… Might as well make use of the body and cyberware… Yeah.
I started searching her for the cyberware her system had told me she had chipped, starting with the Smart Link. It was an implant that linked optic cyberware with the inbuilt guidance module in smart weapons. Together—optics, Smart Link, and guidance module—they allowed for accurate real-time target specification for the gyrojet propelled projectiles smart weapons fired.
When I found it I paused in shock, which was quickly followed by angry self-flagellation and a sprinkling of panic. The implant was covered by a distinct tattoo. A Tiger Claw tattoo.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Stupid scopheaded fuckwit! Why didn’t I check her more thoroughly?! Dumb! Idiot! Why! It would’ve taken only a second! Fuck!
I ran my hands through my greasy brown hair and took a deep breath as I tried to calm down and focus.
Alright, what’re my options? It''s already been…
I looked over at the time displayed on my interconnected screens.
… Over eight hours since they died. The Claws are going to notice her disappearance soon and come looking. They’ve got enough people in the area to figure out who she was with and where they went. I don’t have much time.
I walked over to one of my desks and grabbed my sonic bonesaw from the disorganized mess. The metallic casing was smeared with blood. As I continued to think, I started power walking to the big guy I’d left in the hallway. Whatever I decided to do next, I’d still need to cut him up eventually. He was way too big for me to drag.
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Alright. Fine. Got to get rid of the bodies quick. Can’t just throw them in the dumpster in the alley like normal. Too close and the traces of what I’ve done to the bodies will be clear to anyone with quality optics.
Acid? Could just pour them down the drain… No. Hard to get and too slow.
Fire? Again, hard to set up and too slow.
I could try to frame it like Maelstrom killed them. But cutting up one of the bodies first will be pretty obvious even if I try to cover it up. And I really don’t want to fuck with both the Maelstrom and the Claws. If either figure out that I was responsible for something like that… Yeah, that would be bad.
Could just throw them in a stolen car and set the auto drive to take them into the landfill in the Badlands. Just leave them there. If anyone manages to find them, it won’t be for a long time. Maybe dump some CHOOH2 on the bodies and throw in a remote-detonated incendiary grenade.
I kneeled down next to the body in the hall and started up the sonic saw. Its quiet hum thrummed through me, resonating discordantly in my skull. When I brought it down on the man’s upper thigh—it cut through with only the slightest pressure. I hadn’t gotten around to fixing the delicate mechanism used to precisely tune its vibration frequency. After all, one of the main benefits of a sonic bone saw was that you could tune it to only cut through bone and nothing else. But really, that wasn’t necessary for what I used it for anyway.
Alright. Anything else?… Eh, I need to make a decision quick, and sending them out to the Badlands should work well enough.
I ignored the normal stenches associated with the dead with practiced ease as I worked. They barely even registered over the omnipresent noxious scents soaked into the building. Eventually, splattered with blood and other more odorous substances, I stood up from the now dismembered body. I changed into some clothes that were still dirty and stained, but at least not covered in blood.
The process of getting the car was pretty simple. There were any number of junkers left in the assorted dark and dank abandoned places under overpasses and behind businesses of ill repute. A five-minute walk was all it took to find one. The Mahir Supron FS3 van was a cheap ugly whiny beast and that was just the general consensus for the car. This one in particular was missing a quarter of its plastic bumper. The paint along one side had scraped off in one long skid mark. Dents littered the exterior. One sideview mirror had been ducktaped back together and the other was entirely missing. It was perfect.
I barely had to do anything to copy the key shard—the security was that bad. Within seconds of connecting with the system, I was the new owner. I hopped in and directed the auto drive standard in every vehicle to take me back to the hotel. Scents of cigarette smoke, spilled liquor, and rotting food hung heavily in the van''s stale air. The car’s anemic engine whined as it struggled to get up to the speed limit. Honking vehicles whizzed past me as people ran red lights and narrowly avoided jaywalking pedestrians. Following the speed limit was almost a foreign concept. Really, for the most part, the cops only cared if you hit a pedestrian.
I tapped my fingers against my thigh as I waited impatiently. The Claws could come looking any minute. My chest felt tight and my head pounded with a mix of exhaustion and adrenaline turning stale. Every minute wasted was another minute closer to a painful death.
It almost took longer to get back to the hotel than it had to find and klep the ride. Bumper-to-bumper traffic and the auto drive’s insistence on following ALL road laws made it a slow and frustrating ride as it stopped at faulty stoplights and waited until absolutely everyone finished crossing the crosswalks. I had to override the auto drive programming multiple times. If you didn’t start driving the endless flow of people would never stop crossing no matter what the light said.
Once back, it took the better part of an hour to get the bodies into the van. By the time I was done, I was covered in blood and other fluids once more. The next step would probably get me covered in CHOOH2, so I’d wait to change again. Thankfully, the small gas tank for the van was nearly full. I grabbed a dented gas can and a long rubber tube.
I inserted one end of the tube into the tank and the other into the gas can. Just as I was about to start sucking on the tube to start the flow, as I’d seen others do, I paused. My mind flung back to the physics shard,
“In a closed or partially enclosed system, fluid movement depends on differences in pressure. Whether we consider liquids in a pressurized container or gases in the atmosphere, fluids naturally move from regions of higher pressure to regions of lower pressure. This principle underlies numerous technological applications, from pneumatic tools to industrial pumping systems.”
I had an idea. At a run, I reentered the hotel to grab a shorter section of rubber tubing and a rag. I put the shorter tube into the tank next to the longer one and packed the rag around them to make a seal. After blowing into the shorter one for a moment, CHOOH2 started flowing into the gas can. I grinned to myself.
No gas in my mouth thank you very much.
Once the can was nearly full I pulled the tube out of the tank. Lugging the heavy tank around was a pain, but I managed to cover the bodies well enough and only spilled on myself twice.
Setting up the incendiary grenades took maybe 15 minutes. I decided to connect the detonation to the auto drive system. When the van arrived at its destination it would send a signal to activate the explosives. I would stay connected to the auto drive system through the net from the access point in the hotel and watch through the cameras attached to the van. That way I could override the auto drive as necessary and make sure it got out of the city. Once out of the city, it shouldn’t have any problems getting to the landfill and I’d stay connected the whole way if it had any issues. Still, I added a simple backup cell-activated remote detonator just in case.
Before I sent it off I cleared out the metadata from the system so no one would be able to figure out where this car had been. With a deep breath I nodded to myself as I looked over the car and pressed the button on my cyberdeck to activate the auto drive. As it started to drive, I turned away, and walked with quick steps to the access point in the hotel. Jacking in, I watched on my cyberdeck as the Mahir made its way through the city, occasionally overriding the auto drive to get it moving again.
The van reached the landfill with little incident. Just the normal passing gunfight, crashed and burnt-out cars, and the ever-present signs of inescapable poverty and advertisements for indulgence to distract from the pervasive despair. Out in the badlands, away from the chaotic neon facade of glitz and glamor covering Night City, it was quiet. The pretensions were stripped away in favor of the expansive desert and long strips of asphalt that ran out past the horizon. It was a different type of loneliness. In the city you were alone in the crowd; alone as a bag of meat indistinguishable from all the others; alone to be ground down by the uncaring gears of the bureaucratic machine and corporate interests. Out here, there was none of that.
As it made its way into the landfill, the van’s engine whined as it wound its way through the mountains of trash. All the detritus of a society consumed by endless consumption and indulgence lay piled and forgotten in this growing monument to the human condition. The van finally reached its destination near the center of the landfill and suddenly the connection cut out. Just in case something had gone wrong I activated the backup detonator, but I doubted it was necessary.
It was done. The bodies were gone. Now I just needed to change out of these clothes and clean up the place—probably hide my gear and experiments too. It took a solid couple of hours. The whole time I waited with bated breath for the Claws to come looking. It was midafternoon by the time I was done.
I started searching the net for places to get what I needed for the shaped charges as I waited in my experimentation room. The remote connection to the access point I’d made was buggy and lagged but worked well enough for casual browsing. I was surrounded by various necessities crowded into the small room. All evidence of my presence beyond a few cameras and some deactivated traps had been moved into the room. The door had been blocked through the simple expedience of attaching a pipe clamp to either side of the door and sliding a pipe through. It was just a makeshift crossbar, but it would at least make it pretty difficult to get in. If it seemed like someone was determined to get in, I’d get out through the small hole in the concrete wall I’d found in this room when I first moved in.
As afternoon turned into evening, I started to get confused. I thought that the Claws would’ve come looking hours ago. I’d been happily surprised earlier that I’d managed to get everything done before they came looking, but now I was just befuddled. As evening turned into night, I realized something.
They don’t care. They never cared. She was just a JoyToy. If she’d been hurt in a public way they’d’ve made sure to punish the people responsible. But that wasn’t what happened. She just quietly disappeared. One less person passing a few eddies up the chain. As long as everyone still thinks their protection matters, they don’t care what happens to people at the bottom. Why would they? They use and discard people as a matter of course. It’s just a matter of business. Girls looking to become JoyToys under their “protection” will never be in short supply.
My lips twisted into a wry grin. Dark amusement at my earlier panic and my erroneous assumption of any degree of honesty or honor from gangs made me chuckle softly. I knew better, but I’d assumed that their protection meant something. The number of teens barely edging into adulthood who had joined for said vaunted protection was almost innumerable. So many, myself included, were taken in by the Claw''s claims of honor; or at least their specific brand of honor. I’d seen the results of the horrific things done to children I’d known, and yet I still believed.
I shook my head and lay down on my mattress. It was covered by some dirty sheets I’d scavenged. I was so tired.
How long has it been since I slept? Not since the night before I helped Viktor with the surgery.
Fuck. Around 48 hours. The panic and fear must’ve kept me going.
I snorted in derision at my earlier naivete as my eyes drifted close.
Night City doesn’t care. No one does. The only protection that matters is the one you build yourself.