We somehow mao travel the remaining 200 feet or so to Misty's Shop without Mr. Wick shooting anyone else. I'm going to t that as a win. I hadn't realized just how much of a hair trigger he had.

  I had dropped the troops off at the Gomorrah, with a stack of bills to get drinks and maybe tribute to their own delinquency. Seriously though, some dies put a lot of effort into their routines, and deserved adequate pensation. Realistically, the dancers were probably saving up for better iron to sptter some gonks, or for some of those sick mantis bdes I saw in Vik's catalogue. Yeah would fit. I warhe boys not to get too excited and stay respectful. I didn't want any of them to go missing over a preventable i. I imagihat the security at most of these pces is shoot first, ask your corpse er.

  Mr. Wick, Raynor and I walked into Misty's shop. She stopped her current versation with a young guy to look at us. Her smile, a pstered on affair, got a little steadier. Huh? Misty's the frie person in this cesspit of a city, why would she look that unfortable? Was this asshole b her?

  "Dr Vektor is ready for your friends, Ryan." Her head gesture back towards the alley. I could tell she wao be anywhere else right then.

  "I'll show them the way, then I'll want a chakra thingy." I gave her a cheeky grin. "If you're not busy, that is?" I looked at the punk messing with her, some slicked back Corpo type. Whether he was a wannabe or an actual wage sve remaio be seen. Holy, he really did look like someone in sales or marketing. I hated him instantly.

  "A sing? Sure. Just let me finish up with Mr. Hayashi here." She returned my grin. She knew I was giving her an out.

  Whe into the alley, "Hoss, you were maybe a little too flirty with the little dy in there." Excuse me? Who died and made you the retionship police, Jim? I bit my tongue.

  I sighed, "Jim, didn't you catch how she reacted to us ing in? That was relief, that guy ushihe looks the slimeball was giving her. So, no I'm not flirting with her, just lending a helping hand. She has a guy, and I have my dies. We are just friendly."

  "Flirting." Mr. Wick chimed in. What the fuck was this? Rag on Ryan day?

  "Et tu, Brute? Seriously stop reading too muto this. She is a friend, and I like her, but don't make a mountain out of a molehill." I shook my head leaning into the bit, and made a chopping motion with my hand. Indig the joking had gooo far. They both gru me. Raynor's was the grunt of fatherly disapproval. Mr. Wick's was a "don't care, your problem" grunt.

  I sighed so hard, I felt my ieenager reawaken from years of , just for them te at my angst. This was like having your dad and his scary best frieuring you, on basiners. I'm thirty fug years old, even if I no longer looked it, I didn't o be parented. Not really, a little ribbing didn't really bother me, but what the hell was going on? They never worked together like this on a joke. Well, at least Vik wouldn't give me any guff.

  "What's this I hear about you flirting with Misty? Jackie might have a problem with that." Fuck, he'd just grumbled at me in overprotective father. All that was missing from the se was a shotgun.

  "Vik, not you too." I felt betrayed. Seriously, I might require a whole ten seds for to get over it. My sister used to grill me harder than this over breakfast. Thought it was awfully strahat everyone decided now was the time to screw with me.

  "Nah, just fug with you kid. Misty's a big girl, she take care of herself." He gri me, that gotcha grin.

  I groahat's the problem with pying along and ag like you care, they think they've won. "Vik, this is Jim Raynor and Mr. John Wick. Jim, Mr. Wick this is Dr. Viktor Vektor. Despite his poor sense of humor he is the best Ripper in Night City, and don't let him tell you different\" They all each uys go ahead a whatever you want, but make sure you at least get the same head ware as me. Vik take good care of them and I'll settle up before we leave." I them, "Now I'm going to go make sure that greasy dude doesn't overstay his wele." I pivoted and marched back over to Misty's shop.

  "Miss Olszewski, we feel that our offer is more than fair." He gave her an up and down stare, but it wasn't the lewd kind. More the type of look where he was figuring where to make the best cuts to get maximum value from yans. "Please, don't make the wrong decision. We will be awaiting your reply." Asshole strutted out like he already owhe pce, and he was deigning to let us keep using it.

  I stared at the door, my anger naked on my face. "Some folks could be from bullet therapy. He looks like a good didate for an aggressive treatment pn." I growled. "I'd provide my services for free." Hmm? There it was again that overly vicious behavior. Something was wrong with me today.

  "Now that would be the waste of a bullet. Some people have lost their souls, he murdered his." She ughed and poio her chair. Her quick dismissal of the unpleasant toad was a wonderful thing.

  "You know I could get you a nice drone." I was thinking of leaving a Wisp Infused Probe to look out for her and Vik. They were good people. "They're friendly, hard w and good at frying assholes like that. It'll keep the riff-raff away." I plopped down into the oversized chair. Ah, how I missed you fy chair. That's right any designs I had on Misty were all for this amazing chair.

  She just shook her head at the offer of a drone. "Now, tell me about your test adventures." She pulled our her crystals and begaing up for the sing while I spent the hirty minutes filling her in on a truncated version of the events I'd been through si I saw her. "Sounds like a lot of work, and you seem to have found some nien. Though I didn't think the Terrible Twosome would ever be caught." She smiled big, so the dies were a big deal. I k. Misty had turned on the radio and then started up an ambient rain and flute pieot bad, needed some drums though.

  "I don't know about nice, but I like them. No, if I'm being ho, I love them, even if I don't uand it. It makes me keep expeg the other shoe to drop." I'm sure I had a goofy grin on my face.

  She gave me anentle grin. "I find there's usually no easy path to uanding love. You have to let go of that worry and just focus on the now." She started waving her hands as she guided me to y eyes. "Rex and just listen to the music... " My eyelids began to droop.

  The darkness surrounded me. It ressing in on me. I didn't know where I was or how I'd gotten here. I khat I was running from a monster. Some vague and nebulous beast of eldritch ins. Blending pletely into the lightless void around me. How I could even tell it was there, I had no clue. Yet the creature was already in front of me and right beside me as well. It was everywhere and nowhere all at once. I was nothing to it, just a small thing it took hungry notice of. Its cold and cmmy hands cmped down upon me pulling me down into an an even darker pool of writhing bess. Wails of the damned and lost were being faintly audible uhe silent cag of the beast.

  "Ssssoooon youuuu ssshaalll beeee aaallll oursssssss." More voiceless cag. Hell No! You just back off creepy stalker monster. I refused to be its pything.

  I struggled and fought to break free, but with eaent the tar like oblivion sucked me in deeper. I tried to cast a spell, to turn on my aura to say the prayer for Smite. Nothing worked and I shortly knew myself no more, just another soul wailing and gurgling in despair as the emptiness and meaninglessness of existence was used as a le me.

  There was nothing. But it didn't matter. The slowly diffusing remnants of my thoughts were almost lost to the void.

  A pulse of pain. Pain was something. Nothing mattered. It ointless.

  No, I retty sure pain mattered. At least my pain mattered to me. That was something to g to. My thoughts now being to coalesce, started to gain speed.

  [ Give up, give i go, serve us. ]

  'What? Not just no, but HELL no! Go fuck yourself... ' What the fuck was that? The pain and despair receded. My momentary defiance allowing some mueeded crity of thought. The aterial space made it difficult to focus. The ck of anything made it easy for my mind to begin to reject this presented reality. So was this a dream? No, or at least not quite a dream. Something within myself sehis was both a dream and real at the same time. Though could I even trust my own feelings at this point? No, best not to start down that twisted trail of self denial.

  Was this a proje into my mind? That's as good an answer as I was likely to get for the situation. So that was what was going on. The remainder of the cssics, who, where, why and how eluded any insight at the moment. What could I do about this?

  I felt nothing, there was no pressure of air on my skin, none of the usual sense of ay spao sounds or vibrations. ion of hot nor cold. I could move but there was none of the feedback I associated with motion. Nothing to orient myself against or towards. Except myself which I felt only in the most faint and internal of manners.

  What was left to do? Find a way out of this. Duh. How? Now that was a good question. I had better things to do than float around in... in primordial nothingness.

  I had no idea how long I pohis odd situation. While the hamster wheel in my head spun, I could perceive my sense of self growing. I could almost feel my body again.

  [ You really should just give up. Yoing to serve us one way or another. e o go. ]

  'You're still here? The show's o home.' I made a shooing motion. The cssics always worked. No more peeping at my... My what? My inner space? My mind?

  [ Well, this is a waste of time. Just send the quickhack. Fuck, he got that...shshshshshshshsh ]

  Quickhack! Oh fuck! I now had a pretty good clue about what was going on. I'd been targeted by a runner. When did they find me? How did they force me into this state? Who the hell were they?

  I had to wake up, they could be after Misty. They could be after Vik. Argh. The anger and fear helped, I felt my sense of mana e flooding back. My internal energy twisted in an odd new way, and released in a massive explosion. It was too raw to be called a spell, but it acked with tons of vigor.

  { WAKE UP! }

  And I did.

  Light. Blinding after so long in the darkness. I blinked like there was moo be made in doing so. My eyes were so fug dry. Which made no sense for cybereyes. I was on some kind of gurney, covered in a thin white sheet. I couldn't move very well yet, and most everything hurt.

  "He's ing out of it. Tell me what happened, Misty?" Vik's voice, I thought. "Hhhhhh... " I tried to speak, to warn them. Nope, my tongue went the wrong way and my lips just kind of fpped uselessly. My vocal cords didn't seem able to caty of the air from my lungs.

  "He was fihen he seized and when rigid." She was calm, her training and ages of practice kept her together. I could resped admire her professional demeanor. If they were speaking about my situation like this, it couldn't have been long si began.

  "Might be a reje of his cyberware. Though he should have had symptoms before now." Vik sounded angry but still in trol, like this offended him somehow. No, I got it. He went out of his way to make all the neural es stable with as many of his patients as he could. That was a wonderful attitude but it had a cost. I couldn't imagihe emotional toil of loosing folks you genuinely cared about, not just o over and ain.

  "Hhhhaaaacc... " Was all I could get out. e on mouth. Work, damn it!

  "Hack? Someone spiked you?" Vik sounded almost relieved. Which made sense, if he had an idea of what was wrong, he had a pce to start fixing the problem.

  "Ya... " I mao reply. I'd taken major physical damage from something that had maybe sted a few minutes. Everything was sore.

  He put an io my lips, "Take a puff. Do you have feelings of despair? Nothingness?" Deft motions forced the burst of mist into mouth. I breathed the vapor in as deeply as I could. The rush of the stimunt burhrough my lungs like fire, before spreading everywhere else. It was like a shot of trated expressht to the bloodstream. Things ay body started to wake up. Everything was ing baline. I groa my own brain's attempt at humor. Way too soon.

  "Yeah... said to let go. I would serve, but I didn't give in and then they said to send the quickhack." My mouth still felt like it was full of mush, but I get the words out as best I could.

  "You seem to have avoided the worst of whatever they intended. I'll run you through the ser and then we'll do a softurge. A hard reset should wipe out whatever they snu there." All of that sounded horrible, but robably the best course of a. I trusted that Vik knew what he was doing.

  "Any-Anyway to trace them? I'd like a few words." Yes, a few words. Hackers this is Mr. Wick. That's a few words, right? The st words they would ever hear.

  "Nah, we'd have t in a runner. I don't think you're in the kind of calm enough mood to have anyone rummaging around in your e right now." Yeah, that didn't sound like a fun time.

  So how was I going to track down these assholes? Maybe a few more Observers hanging over the city... Wait, if one had been watg me, would it have caught the intrusion? Probably. Fuck. Was there some kind of guide or course you could take to prepare for these kinds of situations. There couldn't be right?

  Vik took great care of me. Runnihrough the ser, getting all the info on the breay system. Then he performed the hard reset of my cyberware.

  The hard reset was kind of unnerving, especially after what I'd just been through, my eyes went offline. Misty talked me through it, though. She really was the best friend a person could have in this crap-hole of a city. My eyes came balih a snap, ohe reset was done.

  Vik guided me through the system setup procedures. Then they wheeled me over to rest beside Raynor and Mr. Wick, both of whom were still out from whatever additions Vik had chipped into them.

  That was a good thing, I'd hate to see the rea to this from those two. More so, when they had even less text than me about how all of this shit worked.

  Hopefully they'd be calm ohey woke up.

  I'm just going to shut my eyes again. The darkhis time didn't seem so bad.

  The world slowly creeped up on me, and I never saw it ing. One moment, I was lost in unawareness. The , the pag sounds of a boxing mat full swing. The plops and smacks of the gloves the over excitement of the crowd, and the too rapid voice of an annourying to fill air time.

  I let the sounds pass through my awareness, not letting myself focus on their meanings. My mind wasn't ready to start processing the retionship between those sounds and myself. It was a shame because I o reflect, to parse everything that had been going on. I had been too distracted in New Lordaeron. Always filling my time with some project or with the dies. It was like I didn't want to face myself. My heart was unwilling to deal with the pain bubbling under my sind.

  So I pondered in a new nebulous way. I dug into myself to shake something loose. Something was ging, had already ged. Yes, some part of me had shifted, and I felt different. Things that hadn't really made sense, were starting to take root deep in my mind. I had been ign so muy potential because it was easy to let others pick up my sck.

  Why was I okay with Raynor or Mr. Wick trag down my hackers. Shouldn't that be personal? I should want to put the bullets into them myself. Baot so long ago, why wasn't I okay with the Probes handling most of the fighting? But slowly instead of f myself to deal with the reality of fighting, I ceded the responsibility of handling flict to others. Even losing my first robo buddies to Arasaka's interference. Scuff, Fix, Chud Barry. I barely khem, a I still missed them. The only way I had to honor them was to let their vis bey touchstone.

  I hadn't really been suited for flict at the time. I'm not sure I was now, but that had to ge. Deep down I khere was no ging this world without first cutting out it's cers. Some part of me just hadn't wao accept that. I'd thought that maybe I could vince people to work together, to help each other, if I could just provide a safe framework to do it in. That just wasn't true. I'd seen it in the Scav den and in the red optics of the Maelstrom. Some folks o be eliminated.

  I still hadn't takeime to process the sheer fuckery of this city. I kept distrag myself with cars and tinkering, and Sally and Megan. I buried myself in my obsessions, some part of me trying to move past the trauma of loss in the worst ways. There was no room for me to keep ign the world, and it wasn't going tet me. Even the half-assed impact I'd already made was enough to attract all the wrong kinds of attention. I had the tools to do better, maybe I should start taking more advantage of them. I had to start paying more attention to the BTy status, and to the very real leg up it gave me.

  If my Intelligeat was more developed would I've even gotten hacked in the first paybe my Tech stat would have been more help? That's the problem, I didn't know. I didn't uand what any of these things meant except in the most broad of terms. More Body had made me tougher, stronger. More Tech made it easier to prehend the teology of the Khai and the world I had been dropped in. Presumably, more Reflex would make me faster. But was that all they did and what the hell did Cool do anyway? Did it make me more charismatic? Did it mean being cool under pressure? Cause I sure didn't feel any more in trol in the heat of the moment.

  Which also reminded me of my Csses. I still didn't uand what a Druid was. Sure, I could cast spells, seure better, make pnts grow and even ect with animals more. Yet, I'd also found myself staring at things for long periods of time trying to make sense of them in ways that never would have mattered to me before.

  The -Smith leaned into my real hobbies, tinkering and scrapping, so I questios effects less. That could've ended up being a huge mistake. The way it just pushed knowledge into my head, had to have ged my perspective. Even something as simple as w with the Khaydarin crystal could actually be screwing with my mind. The Psifields themselves could be doing some form of long term damage to me, to all of us. After all they weren't meant for humans in the first pce.

  The Padin, my a uood Css. I'd felt even more upset, than before, when others fought for me. And why, despite being level 4 had I gained no new powers other than the Aura and Prayer I got for choosing the Css. Something was different about this css, but I had no idea what it could be. Soon, I'd get aheme and likely another Css, how would it py into all of these issues?

  This was the first time I could remember being able to focus on these issues without getting sidetracked. It was like something had been interfering with my brain to keep me from really analyzing all of this. I was left with one clusion though. I didn't trust any of it. Which was both wise and a big part of why I was having so much trouble with using this system. How could I trust it after been dumped here with almost no expnation? Also, since I didn't trust the system, why did I have sushakable trust in the summons brought here by that system? I'd never ohough that Raynor or any of the folk of New Lordaeron might betray me. The Probes aries were a rock that my mind had g to. It boiled down to something in my gut told me I could trust them.

  Meadran, Lumiar, Faergin and Korvaith. Were they actually loyal to me or to the system? Again my feelings said I could trust them. But I had never been a person to rely heavily on my feelings. I o test these feelings more. See what the rules were, and then how to bend them.

  It was time, I cautiously opened my eyes. Raynor, Mr. Wid Vik were sitting in front of the Doc's monitor watg the boxing match with inteares. It was good that they could enjoy something like that together. This was a se of normal this insane world.

  I had a few messages waiting for me, which I went through while slowly easy myself up and off of the gurney. Megan and Sally were cheg up on me. I replied quickly, filling them in. I wasn't going to gloss things over a and earful about it ter. I cared about them too much to lie or prevaricate. Jaina has sent a few reports on the tinuing expansion of the Town and the projected pletion of the current stru projects. She even had a report on the new Badnds Outposts having already sent Wisps to create Moon Wells and trees. She was more on top of things than I could've of hoped for.

  Still, I had an uneasy feeling as I thought of the dies. Something was wrong there, I was sure of it. Though maybe my misgivings were the product of the ret hag attempt fug with my head.

  There was a long list of short and simple work reports from the Probes. When had they started eg to the ? Since I had no idea what we even needed right now, I left all that to Jaina. There was that trust again. Hmm.

  Alied a breakthrough on the adaptation project of Khai cyberware. Oh, that was very exg news. I dug into the files briefly before shaking it off. There was the -Smith affeg my thoughts. I should save the fun stuff for ter.

  Receipts for the rental of the warehouse, the purchase of the store front, the garbage trud the sales receipt for the fuel station. Good. Everything was now above broad if the cops came a knog.

  A message from Rita of all people asking if I was okay. Huh. I sent her a quick reply with a generic reply that I was alright.

  I looked up to see Mr. Wick watg me. Of course, he was the first to notice I'd gotten up.

  "What have I missed?"