Edge City Chronicles 01

A/N: I've wanted to write a Cyberpunk thing for a while now, and this is chapter one. I'm inspired by things like Ghost in the City, but my protag doesn't have a system here. I wanted to do something where I focused much more on all the tech and sorta let the tech speak for itself. There's going to be some crazy tech, stuff close to the level of magic, though it's all done through technology, in this series. Also, this is just something fun I enjoy writing on the side; don't expect even one-a-week right now like A New Star.

END A/N.

It was strange, after not having been in a fight in so long, to wake up at the tail end of getting the shit beat out of me. 

Stranger still was that I could immediately tell, despite the pain, that it was my body, and not some kind of dream. 

Funny. 

I'd gone to bed last night as always, a very old man well past his prime, even the medicine not able to dull the ache anymore. I woke up today, at what seemed to be noon, in an unfamiliar alley with a couple of unfamiliar street toughs having just beat me bloody. I gave a heavy grunt and sat up, which seemed to startle them. 

"Whoa, there, choom," one of them said. The hell was a choom? 

"Wouldn't want ya gettin' hurt. Well, hurt more," laughed another. 

"This is a joke to you?" I asked as I swiftly stood. Despite the wounds and the pain, this body I found myself in responded quickly and easily. When I was on my feet, I noticed the toughs take a step back. I was confused for just a second, but I soon realized it was instinctive on their part; I towered over them, a real monster of a man compared to these relative pipsqueaks. I looked around, fast, analyzing the situation, a habit built over many long years of combat. That was also what led me to realize the wannabe thugs that had jumped me weren't exactly tiny; no, they were of average size, but the body I was now possessing was massive. If I wasn't seven feet tall right now I'd eat my right sock, and comparing the heights of things like the one-story building to my right and the lamppost I could see at the mouth of the alley gave me a good approximation. The tallest of the toughs that had confronted me was more than a head shorter, standing at likely exactly six feet, and it appeared that my new attitude, likely different from the body's former occupant, combined with my demeanor, had inspired a bit of fear. 

"Why don't you back up a bit, choom," the one in the lead, the shortest of the group, said. He was the only one armed; no, that's not right. I must still be recovering from the sudden transition to another body, even another world, if that was what was happening. That and the beating certainly weren't helping, though I was recovering quickly. The tall boy that I had compared my height against had a pistol, looking like a standard nine millimeter and not one that had been well cared for, in his waistband. 

"And if I don't?" I asked, though I wasn't exactly being menacing, just mild curiousity in my tone. 

"Wrong answer," said the leader, putting on a brave face as he brandished the knife, but I could tell the three of them were nervous. Tall boy reached for the pistol but didn't draw, and I decided that was enough for now.  

I moved, a hell of a lot quicker than I had in decades, sliding around the knife and punching loudmouth in the throat before pivoting around him and grabbing tall boy. I got both his wrists, twisting the pistol away, which he hadn't even fully drawn, before giving him a good, clean headbutt right to the nose. As he started to fall I jerked sideways on his empty left hand, sending him to the pavement hard while further twisting his right wrist. I quickly freed the gun from his grip, spinning it to hold it comfortably in my own before dodging a punch from the third kid and pistol-whipping him in the temple. He dropped like a sack of old bricks and I turned, kicking at just the right moment to catch loudmouth as he was rising, getting ready to knife me, most likely. I snapped his head back with a quick front snap kick, dropping him on the ground. I quickly grabbed his knife, twisting it to put it in the waistband of my pants before giving the former owner of my new pistol a good thump to the side of the head, stopping his rise and sending him off to the ol' land of Nod.  

Not half bad for a centenarian, though I supposed I was in a much younger body at this point. I walked out of the alley and had to stop and lean against the nearby wall, and not because the city was so startling, though it was certainly different. No, it was because I apparently had an internal computer or agent that could overlay things on my vision. A quick scan got me all the information I needed, which included the fact that I had three pieces of machinery, or cybernetics, imbedded in my body. Firstly, I had my neural link, which was a computer system embedded into the back of my neck that interfaced with my body, though it did very little, since it was a cheapo model. Second, within that computer was a small chip that acted as an agent that let me send and receive messages, send and receive calls, organize information, and have a basic handshake connection to this world's internet. The third and final thing was my eyes, which were also cybernetic, though I couldn't tell just from the lived-in feeling. They looked like normal eyes, felt like normal eyes, and gave me the exact feedback that the biological eyes of my old body would have.  

I winced as I examined my agent, feeling like the beating had taken more of a toll on me than I thought. I quickly paged through the contacts that this kid, Thomas Trentmoore, had in his agent, finding a single doctor, apparently referred to as 'rippers' here, listed in his vanishingly shallow contacts list. Hell, it wasn't much different from the stuff we had at the end of my old life, though we still hadn't gotten full implants quite this advanced, but making a phone call worked the same whatever the device. I was old enough to remember damn dial-rotor phones all the way through partially integrated devices, so figuring out how to call the doc on this thing wasn't really that hard. It rang a couple times before a really deep, rich, slightly gruff voice answered, the kind of voice someone who had a naturally deep and resonant voice got after smoking for a good long while.  

"Thom? The hell's goin' on, kid?" asked Don, the ripper on the kid's contact list. 

"Hey, uh, doc, you in your office right now?" I asked, finding that I could subvocalize and the agent picked my speech up fine.  

"Yeah, I'm always here. What happened, kid?" he asked. 

"I got in a little fight with some goons, doc. I knocked their asses out, but they roughed me up pretty bad. Left side of my chest hurts, feels like I cracked a rib," I explained. 

"Well, shit, come on over, we can patch that stuff up real quick. You know where I'm at?" he replied. 

"Still in the unit behind that old noodle shop?" I asked as I pushed off the wall and started lumbering down the street. Despite this being a high-tech future of chrome and body modification, I still towered over everyone else as I walked down the road. A little memory from the original Thom also informed me that people in this city drove like maniacs most of the time, so I made sure not to space out too much as I peered over the heads of the crowd, keeping my head on a swivel whenever I crossed a street. 

"Yeah, I'm back behind old Chun's place," Don answered. 

"I'm staggering my way over there now," I said. 

"Call me if you can't make it. I can pick you up in the old Freeline," Don said. 

"I think I'll live," I shot back. "Just hurts like hell." 

"Rib injuries always do," Don said before ending the call. 

I managed to make it the dozen blocks to the noodle shop, slipping into joint as inconspicuously as a 7'2" mountain of a late teen could, only helped by my many years of combat and fighting training not to be knocking into everything in sight. Chun gave me a look, then a second as he realized how beat up I was. 

"You okay, boy?" he asked, gesturing at me. 

"Going back to see doc," I replied, to which he nodded before gesturing at his daughter, the name came back to me as I saw her, Adelia, to open the door for me. Adelia worked in the noodle shop part-time, helping cook and serve the customers, though I knew there had to be more to her than that. That wasn't from the kid's memories, but from the way she moved; nobody else in the shop seemed to notice, or they didn't care if they did, but she moved like a damned killer. She was not all that much shorter than I was, which was also unusual, especially for someone with rather strong Asian features and a father who was only a bit over five feet, but I couldn't afford to be distracted by her oddities, nor her overwhelming beauty, giving her a nod as I walked through the back door that she had opened for me. 

There was a small courtyard behind the noodle shop that a couple businesses and houses opened onto, one of those places that had been mostly patched over as the city developed, all the ways not going through a building blocked off now, but it still held onto its little slice of smoggy sky overhead. Doc's unit was right in the center of the 'back' wall, the building there being in the dead center of the block. Nobody complained about those business having to come in and out through the other shops, however, as they were some of the best shops of the lot. Particularly, nobody was going to complain too much about a doctor that offered cheap and very high-quality services having to walk through their shop, nor would they complain about the others, a small security firm and a little accounting place that got miracle results with their work, tromping back and forth. I also knew, from Thom's memories, that at least the doc had a way to get out through a small walkway that led directly from his shop to a small garage that his aforementioned little van was parked in. It was a little old model that was modified to act as a mobile triage unit and ambulance, and the only time Thom had memories of the doc leaving his shop was to drive out to somebody who wouldn't be able to make it to him in time. 

The doc's shop took up most of the basement of the central building and I tromped down the stairs, seeing the security fence was shoved to the side and roller door he had over the large opening was all the way up. I walked in, smelling old pipe tobacco, explaining the heavy rasp in his voice, but also caught a whiff of disinfectant and new chrome, which had its own particular smell. Don, which was a shortening of the doc's full first name, Donnally, was seated on a low stool that he often wheeled around the place on, watching something on a large screen to the side. He turned to look at me as I walked in, wheeling over to give me a closer look. 

"They really beat the hell outta ya, kiddo," he said, gesturing to his exam chair. "Take your shirt off and take a seat. They didn't stomp your legs any, did they?" 

I thought for a second as I stripped my shirt off, wincing at the heavy bruising on my torso before sitting in the chair. "Nah, doc, at least, nothing feels busted lower than my gut," I answered after sensing for any pain from south of my stomach. 

"Good. Let me swing around and get an X-ray here," he said, already in triage mode, moving some of the vast array of tools and machinery around the chair down in front of my torso. "Who the hell beat you like this? Get in some trouble with the Hell Cats or something?" 

"I don't know about the Hell Cats, but there's a little gang of-ah, damn that stings-shits on my block trying to act tough. They call themselves the, uh, Apartment People or something, I don't remember, but they're just some two-bit thugs acting tough," I explained. 

"Is that where the knife and the piece came from?" the doc asked, nodding at the weapons. I took them out of my belt and put them on one of the side tables before answering. 

"Yeah, I clocked all three of the goons and then took these off them. Not in great shape at all, but they're worth something, at least, and better I have them than those losers," I answered. 

"Right," doc said, going over the scans. "Well, good news and bad news." 

"Hit me with it, doc," I said. 

"Good news, the rib's only cracked; a little bone paste from a quick injection, you rest tonight, it'll be mostly fixed up by tomorrow morning," he explained. 

"That sounds great, doc," I replied. "But, uh, what's the bad news?" 

"The bad news is this; who the hell are you?" he suddenly asked, giving me a piercing glare. 

"Oh, yeah, that," I said, keeping the weapons I had just put on the table in my line of sight. 

 "Look, you don't gotta get so nervous," he said, wheeling over to get something from a storage rack before wheeling back. "But, listen, I've known Thom since he was knee-high to a grasshopper, and you're definitely not him. Well, you've got his body and brain, according to my scans, but you're not Thom." 

"Uh, let me explain like this," I said after thinking a second. "I had a, uh, really long dream, a dream that I was somebody else, doing something else. You could say that I lived another life entirely, doc. I woke up with somebody else's memories shoved in my head, close to a hundred and ten years of 'em, and now I'm a lot more that guy than, uh, Thom. Don't really know how or why, but that's what happened." 

"Crazy as that is," Don said, pressing a tube against the center of where the pain was coming from in my ribs, "I've definitely heard crazier. Not from kids of old war buddies of mine, but I have heard crazier." 

Whatever he was doing, there was a sharp pain for just under a second and then the area went mostly numb, though I could still slightly feel it as something moved in and pressed into the rib. It was a strange, not unpleasant sensation, and I felt a very slight twinge as it did a very slight re-alignment on the rib and got it all back perfectly in place. There was a cooling sensation then, and the doc lowered something else from overhead and did another scan after putting the tube down. He nodded at whatever result the machine gave him, pushing it back up before crossing his arms and looking at me. 

"So, you're somebody else in Thom's body, basically?" he asked. 

"I mean, yeah, I feel like I lived for over a century as this other person; it wasn't just flashes of memories, I remember living as them for a long time," I answered. 

"Well, I'll still think of you as Thom, just a more capable Thom, I guess. You are more capable, right?" doc asked me with a slight, sly grin. 

"Was a soldier and a merc in that other life for almost fifty-five years," I replied. "Served in the military from my early twenties until my late thirties, then did private security work for another thirty or so years. Finally had to retire when I was approaching seventy; even with new medicines, the body couldn't handle front-line work anymore, and I didn't want to push papers for a living." 

"Damn straight," the doc said. "I served for quite a long time myself; twenties all the way until my late fifties. Was with a really good merc company, HQ is here in Edge City, for the last fifteen years. I started training as a ripper with the army, and then that's what I focused on more when I went merc. The company here, Overton Arms, offered me an arm and a leg to stay with them, but I was getting tired of all the fighting. Took my payout and left, opening my little clinic down here and its been, what, twenty years now? I just take care of old buddies, friends and family of theirs, and the occasional walk-in these days." 

"Thom, I mean, I always wondered how you could afford even this place when you saw so few people. I guess you've got a damn good nest egg," I said. 

"I do alright," Don said with a laugh. "But, anyway, what're you gonna do now? I hear your old lady passed away just recently; my condolences." 

"I don't really know, about either thing, really," I said quietly. "I stopped fighting because I got too old, but that no longer seems to be a problem." 

"You should become a Solo," Don said suddenly, sucking on the stem of his unlit pipe. 

"What the hell's a Solo?" I asked. 

"In this world, you've got soldiers, you've got gangsters, you've got corpo goons, and you've got mercs," Don said, ticking them off on his fingers. "But, you've also got people who work on their own, or with a small team. We usually call them Solos, including ones who really mod out their bodies and brains, who we call Cyberpunks. Then you've got the real crazy ones, who we call Edgerunners; they're the men and women who live their whole lives on the edge, always looking for the next big thrill, the next crazy job. Some of them burn out young and hot, while some are still around even today; living legends that could take on a whole army by themselves and make it look easy." 

"And I could just, well, become one?" I asked skeptically, gesturing with a hand. 

"Well, it's mostly that easy. Solos mostly work for Fixers, people who negotiate jobs. You want to be a Solo, you go to Fixers and start doing work; it’s basically that easy. They'll make you run scut jobs to start, errands and deliveries and shit, but if you prove you got the chops, the sky's pretty much the limit," he explained. 

"Huh. A Solo? Sounds fun," I said. 

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