Edge City Chronicles 13

I woke up the next morning and, damn, if I didn't feel like a million bucks. Also, like I could eat an entire herd of cattle and keep going. Luckily, Don had a whole pack of ration bars ready and waiting for me. How considerate.  

After choking down another three of the awful things, I had to stagger out of the Doc's office and get something to drink. I had enough creds now that I could afford to buy a few drinks out of a vending machine without worrying, even though I usually just had water at home run through a filter on the tap. The vending machines were truly ubiquitous in Edge City, something I wasn't really used to yet, as they were far more numerous than pretty much any city I'd visited in my previous life. I bought some kind of mild, unsweetened tea and drank four bottles of it before making my way back in to the Doc's and stopping by the head. After washing my hands I was back in the main part of the room to see Don at his desk watching something on a large screen on the wall.  

"Doc," I said, and he swiveled his chair to give me a critical eye. 

"Chair," he said, pointing at his ripper chair. 

I sat down with a sigh, letting Don wheel over and run a bunch of scans and tests, including poking my arms with one of the devices above the chair, causing my muscles to react. After about ten minutes, he was satisfied with whatever the results were, or just satisfied that he had enough data, as he leaned back and scanned the screens of the machine. I waited for a while, but it seemed he had gotten lost in thought, so I got up and put my armor and rig back on while waiting for him to finish. When he still wasn't out of it, I cleared my throat, loudly, which got a slight start out of the man. 

"Right, good results," he said, scratching his head. 

"Nothing wrong?" I asked, all I really cared about in the moment. 

"Not wrong, no, just more than I was expecting. You're gonna need to eat a lot for the next couple days, kiddo, and drinks a bunch, too. Your body is lacking in everything, from calories to nutrients, and you need to make up the deficit," he answered. 

"Not harmful, though?" I pressed. 

"Not unless you don't eat or drink enough," he replied. "Your muscles are still finishing, well, for lack of a better term, condensing, and your bones are finishing hardening. You need a lot of nutrients to make for all of that. Your cardiovascular health was already good even for your age, but you're literally off the damn charts now, so you should be even better at, well, anything and everything active." 

"Any other big surprises?" I asked. 

"Just the raw numbers. Wouldn't matter much if you didn't want to be a ripper or weren't that interested in biology," Doc said, shrugging. "Your muscles are going to be about twenty percent denser without suffering any negatives for that increased density. They'll hold that density, too, so if you hit the gym and build them bigger they'll be just as dense. Your bones are maybe a quarter stronger than they were, possibly thirty percent improvement. Cardiovascular is where it was really big; your heart's stronger, healthier, and more efficient; your red blood cells have been improved; your white blood cells are better; your bone marrow is more efficient. It's a total upgrade." 

"What does that mean for my overall fitness?" I asked. 

"You can still get hurt," he quickly stated. "You can still get sick, poisoned, etc. You just will be more resistant to common diseases and infections. Your blood carries more oxygen and distributes it better, and you generate less lactic acid and handle it better. Basically, you won't get sick hardly ever and it'll be more minor, you can be physically active longer and at higher intensity, and you will hit harder and not break your bones as easily." 

"All good, no bad. It really was a miracle drug," I grunted. 

"I want you to come back in one week. I don't care if you workout or do work or anything for that week, but I want a fresh set of readings after a week passes," Doc said, wheeling back to his desk. "Unless you have something, hightail it. I've got other customers coming in today." 

"I have other shit to sell, but it's not that much. Seems like the dens I hit yesterday had just sold most of their stuff. I'll come back some other time," I said. 

"Bring it with you next week if you have to," Don said, waving a hand at me as I walked out. 

I would do that, but I also wanted to get the couple guns I had grabbed taken care of while I was thinking about it. Most would be sold, but the one shotgun looked like it was in okay shape, likely because it was still fairly new, and I wanted to clean it, along with my other guns, before testing it out. The gun shop in Applewood had a range, so I would clean everything up before heading down there. I stopped on my way through the noodle shop and ordered four large bowls, which made the old man's eyes bulge a bit, but he prepped all four and sealed them up, putting them all in a single large bag. I took the train back to my apartment before eating all four bowls in record time. Looking around, I decided that I was going to take care of the gun stuff today and then look for a new, better place. I wouldn't hurt to see if Mercer or somebody could get a line on a good place, rather than me just randomly wandering around. I sent the old fixer a message before starting to work on the guns. 

'I don't do houses, kid. Forwarding you the Colonel's contact,' Mercer replied gruffly a minute later. 

I pinged the man and he replied right away. 'Colonel. Sit rep.' 

'Mercer sent me your deets,' I said as I worked on cleaning my rifle first. 'Got some creds from some jobs and need somewhere to live that isn't a total shithole like my current spot.' 

'District?' he sent. 

'Japantown, Central, Warehouse, Northern, preferably in that order. Safe and clean are big prio,' I sent back. 

'Copy. Hold one,' he sent. Man sounded like former military and with a name like 'Colonel,' I was guessing he had served before becoming a fixer. I waited for his response while cleaning all the guns, even the trash ones, and getting them all put back together. Maybe the extra twenty minutes of work could net me a couple extra creds from the stingy gunsmith.  

'Seven listings. Four in Japantown,' Colonel sent me, along with a data packet on the real estate. All of it was apartments, even the one in the warehouse district, but I hadn't really expected any different. The Japantown stuff was what I was interested in, as that was where I currently was and would prefer to work out of if given a choice. I looked through the four listings and the third immediately caught my eye. It was a building on the opposite side of Applewood, about four blocks from me and one from the gym I had signed up for. It was rated as clean with a top notch security system with a netrunner on-site that kept the place safe from most hackers and wannabe burglars. The price was steep for the one listing, eight hundred creds a month, but then I already had about thirteen thousand in the bank, not including the rest of the chrome or the pile of cred sticks under my bed. 

'Blue Tower,' I sent to Colonel. 

'Forwarded your deets. Boss Brag owns it. He'll contact,' Colonel replied. 

I finished with the guns and bundled them up, including the shotgun I wanted to test, before heading out and down to Applewood. I got a message from a hidden source as I walked through the market asking about a Blue Tower rental and replied affirmatively. A small data packet came back which turned out to be the lease, and I signed after reading the three pages carefully. Basically, don't be a dick, don't be loud after midnight and before six in the morning, and don't bring a fight back to the apartment. Otherwise, it was eight hundred creds a month and a minimum of six months when signing with an extra month as a deposit. I signed after reviewing it and sent it back along with a sixteen hundred cred transfer. I didn't even have a lease on my current place, it was just month-to-month, so I would move all my stuff that afternoon and then just let the place lapse at the end of the month. 

I entered the gun shop to a weary frown from the owner, or maybe just the usual day worker, I wasn't exactly sure. I dumped everything but the shotgun on the counter in front of him, which I stood up to the side, and gestured at the loot. He rolled his eyes and looked it all over, way too quickly, I might add, before making me a frankly pathetic offer of a hundred and ten credits for the whole pile, but I didn't care to fight him about it. I just accepted the deal and took the transfer before buying another box of ammo for the rifle and a couple boxes of ammo for the shotgun. I paid a whole five credits to use the range, and went and took up a lane to get used to the shotgun. The weapon wasn’t exceptional in any way, just a standard twelve gauge that could handle pretty nominal ammo and not much else. Still, it would put down a Scav easily and could even punch through somebody with low-level chrome if I used slugs, which is basically all I was planning on using for it.  

I only fired enough to get used to the gun, glad for my size and strength in that firing the shotgun was very easy. I returned to my apartment after my testing, cleaning the place up before grabbing all my equipment and moving to the new apartment. Blue Tower was a twenty story apartment building with a nice lobby that had two little shops in it, a convenience store and a small, twenty-four hour grill that one could get fried food or sandwiches at whenever they wanted. I moved through the door at the back of the lobby, which opened at a ping from my agent and made my way up to the new apartment on floor ten. No Scavs in this building. 

The unit itself was bigger and nicer than my previous unit, and by a lot. It had a big common area, a small kitchenette, a huge bathroom, and a massive bedroom with a huge bed that would actually fit me. There was a small office that had a rack on the wall that could easily store all my guns; I was guessing a solo had been using this unit before I grabbed it. Maybe they had managed to make it big and had moved on to a high-end unit, but just as likely they were six feet under at this point. Solos tended to not live very long in this business, especially in a city as insane as Edge City, and I was hoping to defy the statistics. Having a Failsafe as a contact and having taken a miracle drug that was still improving my body were some good starts towards that goal. 

I put my gear in the office room and my clothes in the closet in the bedroom before heading out and returning to the old apartment, as I was already thinking of it. I grabbed all the cred stick and stuck them in my rig before grabbing the rest of the chrome and hoofing it back to the new apartment. I dumped the chrome in a corner of the office before heading out yet again, finding a bank location with an ATM and entering my account details from my agent before scanning each of the cred sticks. Most of them were for around a hundred creds, which still added up, but two of the sticks had nearly a thousand creds on them and one had over sixteen hundred. Well, there was my rent money and deposit for the apartment repaid already, and just from that one stick. 

I transferred everything into my account and then returned to Blue Tower to take off the rest of my gear and change into gym clothes. I kept my pistol on me, which might have bene unusual most other places, but only and idiot went around this kind of city without being armed. I walked over to the gym and greeted Lana before heading further in and getting through a workout. After an hour, I returned to the apartment and showered before going out and buying about a hundred creds worth of food. Some of it was processed crap, which was almost unavoidable in this day and aged, but there were some fresh vegetables if one was willing to pay a bit more. The price didn't bother me, not with fifteen grand sitting in my account and more money to come in from more jobs down the line.  

I couldn't help but make a second stop on the way back, wanting food now, and I got four meals from a place down the street, the opposite direction of Applewood from the apartment. Each meal was five credits and was a lot of food, but I ate all four of them and still made a stir fry with rice and vegetables afterward and ate that as well. I was really hoping this new obsession with food was going to die down a little after a few days, as I was going to be eating through a lot of credits at this rate.  

I hadn't done all that much today but I was still a bit out of it from the frantic day before and the use of The Serum. I went to bed a little early and slept for close to ten hours, which was pretty unusual, but I chalked it up to the changes still percolating through my body and moved on. I was up early the next day and wanted to take on some work, so I got ready, got geared up, and stopped downstairs to get some breakfast at the little grill. There was only one person there besides the workers, a big dude who was clearly rocking a lot of chrome. I gave the man a nod when I entered and he returned it as he continued eating and I put my order in. Everyone in the place had wide eyes and disbelieving expressions when I ordered six breakfasts, but I was hungry. I ate four of them there and took the other two with me to-go on the subway. Maybe it was time I looked into getting a ride with all the credits I now had.  

I finished both the other meals by the time I was at the stop near Mercer and tossed the trash in a can in the station before walking through the dingy streets to the old fixer. Voronov was there as usual, giving me a bit of an eye today as I walked up and sat down, but he wasn't expressing hostility, so I didn't pay it much mind. Mercer was on a call, and I had to wait until his eyes changed from gold back to their usual sky blue before he was ready to talk shop. 

"Helluva job you did, kid," he grunted. When I just gave him a look, he continued, "You and that Failsafe running all over town shooting the place up. Luckily, that Aces bastard drew all the heat to him, so people are barely aware you were involved, but that whole thing was a fucking mess. At least it shows us you're competent out of the whole thing." 

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," I replied sarcastically. 

"Look, kid, I got more…involved work, if you're interested," he said, ignoring my remark. 

I sighed, saying, "Sure, lay it on me." 

"Sometimes, I need things retrieved. Sometimes, that's from people that don't want that thing to get retrieved. You understand what I'm saying?" he said. 

"Look, I really don't want to get embroiled in any kind of sticky politics," I said, holding up my hands. 

"None of that shit. I'm talking gangs, Scavs, and sometimes some unlicensed assholes without permits. Very rarely I might need something from a corpo, but I'll be very clear about it," he explained. 

"Then, fine, I'm your man," I said with a shrug. 

"Good. Job. Get this box of experimental ammo back from this Crazy Knights location," he said, sending me deets of a job stealing some ammo from a Crazy Knights warehouse. Crazy Knights were a weird gang, having a lot of high-rollers and movers and shaker as part of their numbers. Really, it was mainly grandkids of rich assholes and some people who wanted to play tough on the streets while also talking about justice at the same time, but they tried to bill themselves as something more than a slightly rich gang. I didn't buy the marketing, and I would treat them like any other gang I ran into. 

"I'll get it back," I said, standing up and giving Voronov a nod before leaving the clearing. 

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