[NORTH KABUKI – Kowalski’s Clinic]

  Thursday | 17 JUN 2077 | 11:41

  [NCPD THREAT LEVEL: MODERATE]

  Will spent most of the morning with Doc Kowalski putting the disarmed Claw back together. The Tyger Claw boss Jun Azegami was unexpectedly understanding about the whole situation and even a little bit apologetic.

  “Ojisama is a prick. Maybe this will teach him some humility, but thank you for saving his life.”

  Apparently, the arrangement Kowalski had made was valuable enough to the Tyger Claws to overlook something as minuscule as non-lethal dismemberment. Still, Will had changed the patient intake protocol to avoid similar situations in the future. The new drop-down turrets in the corners were painted white with big red crosses on the sides. Will and Kowalski nicknamed them Mercy and Comfort.

  Will was sweeping the front office again when the thought materialized. He had really screwed over a lot of people when he’d quit the NCPD. Good people. The kind of people who lend a burned-out ex-cop five hundred eddies to pay rent. He had still gotten himself evicted in the end, but that was no one else’s fault but his own. The disgust that had led him to quit had turned to depression. The booze hadn’t helped. It had only led to bad decisions and disastrous results.

  Somehow, after everything he had been through, Will was climbing out of the hole he had dug himself. It was far past time to make things right. So he made a mental list of the people he owed. First was Scott Winter, Netsec netrunner. Five hundred eddies for rent. Will transferred the money and checked his balance. Still over five grand left. Okay, who else? He asked himself. Sergeant Jasmine Dixon had been his Team Leader and the one who fought his decision to quit hardest. Four hundred eddies for food. Four hundred eddies he had spent on booze instead. He sent her the money, guilt still hanging over him. Then, there was Detective Tommy Mallone. Two hundred eddies to see a ripperdoc three months ago. Will had been stocked up on synth vodka for a week. It was a miracle Will still had a liver at all. Will paid off the final bit of money he owed, knowing it was only one kind of debt.

  It still felt good. The big loan loomed over his head, but he didn’t have enough yet to put a dent into it. He winced, just thinking about the interest rate on that bike loan. The bike that he drunkenly obliterated in a crash. It was his own fault. Stupidity can really hurt sometimes. Will thought to himself before he banished that particular memory from his mind. He sent texts to each of his friends, the same message: “Can we talk? I need to apologize.”

  Ping. Someone had written back already.

  [NEW TEXT MESSAGE]

  Sender: Scott Winter

  Time: 11:57

  “I thought you were dead, choom! Call me after work.”

  Will just gave the message a thumbs up. No response from the others. Well, that was no big surprise. Letting people down had become his thing for a while. Maybe they had decided he wasn’t worth keeping in contact with.

  Doc Kowalski walked into the office and saw Will standing there with a broom in his hand and staring at the ground. He shook his head with a chuckle, “Kids today.”

  Will snapped out of his trance. He got back to sweeping, but Kowalski just took the broom from him and put a hand on his shoulder, “You should rest, Will. Take rest of day off.”

  “Are you sure, Doc? We’ve only been working since 4:00. I’m still good for another five.”

  “Will, we just put Tyger Claw back together and avoid gangwar. If I need help,” he gestured to the turrets, “I will ask them.”

  With that, Will was shooed from the front office and downstairs. Doc was right, though. Will had been overdoing it. He walked out of the prep room and down the hall next to the surgical suite before hooking a left at the safe room and climbing the stairs to what would eventually be patient and exam rooms. Kowalski had big plans for the clinic and, as far as Will could tell, had made all the right compromises with the local crimebosses to ensure it would last. Will had a bed in the corner, across from the clinic’s shipping dock, where the occasional Tyger Claw truck would load or offload a shipment of illicit goods.

  In Night City, this was about as good a deal as Kowalski could expect. It pre-empted the usual racketeering and offers for ‘protection’ that plagued business owners and operators in Watson, and especially Kabuki. Will just reminded himself he was no longer a cop, and focused on the good they were doing.

  Will couldn’t blame his mistakes on the world anymore. He had to grow up and take responsibility for his own problems. He had already tried self-destruction. Maybe it was time for self-improvement.

  Paying off debts was a good start. Finding an apartment seemed like the next best action. So, Will pulled up his agent and started checking listings for studio apartments in the area and found two options. One was a single room in the Megabuilding H11. The megablock itself wasn’t too bad, though there were more Tyger Claws than he’d prefer. It was the fact that the surrounding area was lousy with Maelstrom maniacs. It was also a little pricey at twelve hundred eddies a month for 244 square feet. The next spot was within walking distance of the clinic, just outside the Kubuki Market. It was a long-stay room at the Motel Kabuki and only a thousand eddies a month. He looked at the floorplan, it was a lot of room, more than he’d had living in a storage closet in Motel Hell. He wasn’t sure what he’d do with all that space, though.

  Will decided he’d rather live next to the Kabuki Market than inside another megablock. He submitted the request to rent the room to the owner and was about to move on to the next item on his list when the call came in.

  [INCOMING CALL]

  Caller: Shinkichi Yoneda

  Time: 12:10

  [ANSWER ?] [SEND TO VOICEMAIL ▼]

  Will answered immediately, “Yes, Mr. Yoneda?”

  “Ah, such a respectful boy. Scrap, do you know who owns Motel Kabuki?”

  Will now had an idea of who, “I’m guessing you do.”

  “Yes, why you can’t stay away from me? Are you in love with me or something? Ha ha, just kidding. I let you stay in the apartment, eight hundred dollars a month, first and last month due today.”

  Will was gobstruck. How many hotels and apartments did Yoneda own? He left the question unasked and brought up the discrepancy, “Eight hundred, I thought it was supposed to be a thousand.”

  Yoneda chuckled, “That price for assholes, Will. You not asshole, right?”

  “Trying my best not to be, Mr. Yoneda. Thank you, I’ll take it.”

  “Good boy, send me money, and I send you key.”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Yoneda hung up, and Will just sat there with a stupid grin on his face for the longest time.

  Will looked down at his balance again and couldn’t quite believe it.

  [NEUROPORT – FINANCIAL OVERLAY]

  Account Holder: Will Scrap

  Institution: Night Corp Credit Union

  Balance as of 17 JUN 2077 12:59

  €3,612.73

  [DISMISS] [PAY BILLS] [REQUEST LOAN]

  Despite paying off the debts that had been nagging at his soul for the past five months, and paying rent on a semi-respectable apartment, he still had more money than he had possessed in a long time. Something about this bothered him. What was he forgetting? The image of the little pyramid from the Academy popped into his head unbidden. In the hierarchy of needs, he had shelter, clothing, a bed to sleep on, and somewhat clean air to breathe (inside the clinic at least). So what need was he neglecting? His stomach growled, providing the answer. Food. That was a big one. Luckily, Will’s new apartment (room 303) was right next to the shops and stands at the Kabuki market. Will made a mental list of the staples to keep himself alive. Plenty of RaMMMMen, of course, the poor man’s luxury. Tofu bars, ‘chocolate’ flavored protein bars, Orgiatic Salsa Agave, and some Slaughterhouse Jerky would be nice for variety. He knew the marketing about the ‘jerky’ containing real meat was a lie, but he actually liked the taste and needed the protein.

  Work was coming in regularly from Regina Jones. So far, Will had managed to survive, but he knew this string of luck could not last for long. Night City was a high-risk zone, filled with predators who would crush someone like Will in the time it took to register their existence. He had no delusions of what or who he was in the scheme of things. He was a small fry, working the edges of the Minor Leagues (and just barely).

  It was still early in the afternoon when Will headed out to the Kabuki Market to shop. He paid for a couple of weeks' worth of groceries and brought them up to the third floor up the stairs, and thumbed the door pad. As the door slid open, Will noticed that the room was fairly clean and even came fully furnished. Thank you, Yoneda.

  It all felt undeserved. The more he considered his current lot, the more he became filled with overwhelming gratitude for the people who had helped him. Moving in went smoothly. The groceries seemed to pack themselves. Which was good, because Will was running on autopilot now. His mind’s eye replayed moments from the past week almost obsessively as he cleaned and organized his new apartment. After several hours slipped by, he took a seat at his kitchen table and rested.

  Will continued to ponder what his newfound prosperity meant as he cradled a small cup in both hands preciously. He took a slow sip of the tap water, trusting the cheap purifier he had purchased to do its job, then looked around the room again. There was no denying it. The Universe had come through. All debts paid. He had a good job working for Doc Kowalski, and a lucrative bit of merc work on the side. Nowhere near what the top players were making, but that didn’t bother him. What bothered him was the feeling that this was a mistake. Could the Universe have chosen the wrong man to save and lift out of the gutter?

  Will put the empty cup down on the table and in that single moment decided to try to be the man the Universe thought was worth saving. The man he had tried and failed to be after coming out of the Academy. The only question now was how? The clinic came to mind. Doc Kowalski was helping people whom the corpo-controlled medical industry had deemed unprofitable. Sure, he was also upgrading Afterlife mercs and allowing Yakuza and Tyger Claws to run black-market shipments out of the shipping dock, but nobody was perfect. Besides, Night City’s corruption was so absurdly vast in size and scope that it made a few trucks of illegal cyberware and drugs look downright legitimate.

  It took Will a moment to shake himself out of his thoughts enough to realize someone had just knocked on the door. He hadn’t set up the security camera feed yet, so he quietly pulled out his Lexington and stood at the side of the door. He stretched just enough to get a peek through the peephole and see a rough-looking Asian man in his late 40s or early 50s. Will holstered his weapon and tapped the door open.

  In a calm voice, Will greeted the man, “Hello?”

  “You’re my new neighbor, thought I’d check you out myself.”

  “Probably a good idea,” Will admitted.

  “You look a little scrawny,” he continued before letting himself into the apartment uninvited. He looked around and seemed impressed. “Cleaned up nice. What’s your story?”

  “No story. Working at the clinic over by Pinewood Junction. I’m Will, by the way.”

  “Roh. No story, eh? Yoneda likes a good story. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have one, but hey, I’m just being nosy. Seeing how you live. Pretty bare, looks like.”

  “What’s your story, Roh?” Will asked, genuinely curious.

  “Used to be a boxer. Now I train them. Hey, you looking for a gym? You should be. I own one in the Roundabout. Check it out when you can.”

  “Actually,” Will said, thinking of how easily winded he had been from sneaking around and wrestling patients, “I really do need to get back in the gym.”

  “Good, Iron Fist Gym is open 24/7. First day’s free. I’ll be looking for you. Anyway, I’m satisfied you’re not a serial killer. See ya around.”

  Roh’s departure left Will alone again. He checked the time. 3:15 PM. His schedule was wide open, and for some reason, that made him feel uneasy. He had the feeling he should be doing something. So, with a sigh, he went through the mental to-do list again. It was too early to call Scott Winter back, and his old Sergeant hadn’t returned his text if she had gotten it at all.

  The Lexington. Will’s pistol. The realization that a barely lethal gun in this line of work wasn’t good for business. Still, he didn’t want to give her up. He needed a gunsmith. Just then, he remembered that there was a Gun-O-Rama in the Roundabout. Seconds later, he was out the door and on his way.

  [NORTH KABUKI – Gun-O-Rama]

  Thursday | 17 JUN 2077 | 15:20

  [ARASKA STOCK: CRASHING]

  Will, amazingly, was the only person in the shop. The weapon vendor waved him over the second he stepped in. It was a decent-looking shop and looked stocked with all sorts of nasty tools.

  “Hey friend, Shooter’s the name.”

  “Will. You’re not going to finish that with a rhyme, are you?”

  “‘Course not, I have some dignity left. What can I do you for, Will?”

  Will slowly pulled his coat open and pointed to his old service pistol. Shooter nodded his head, almost immediately understanding the problem, “The M-10AF Lexington, the little power pistol that could.”

  “She’s done more than most, but she’s just not…”

  “Lethal enough? I mean, I recently read an old magazine article that claims it was meant to be ‘less than lethal’ when they designed her in the first place.”

  “I need her to be quiet, but pack a punch. Ideas?”

  Shooter put his hand out expectantly. Will removed the magazine and racked the slide before handing the unloaded weapon, handle first, to the gunsmith. He closed his eyes and hummed for a minute before speaking again.

  “XC-10 Cetus suppressor—threaded, baffle stack drops it to a whisper past ten yards, POI shift under a minute of angle. Equalizer barrel, ported and cryo-treated—muzzle velocity jumps, deeper wound channels. Pinpoint recoil spring kit—dual buffers, cuts flip, groups tighten after the first hit. And high-velocity handloads—124-grain JHP, deep-seated, slow powder—1,350–1,380 out of a four-inch barrel, 450–480 foot-pounds. Still 9mm Para, no kaboom risk on modern frames, but she’ll wear parts faster.”

  Will simply nodded, “I don’t know what any of that means, to be honest. I just need it to be quiet and pierce armor.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes and about two-thousand eddies, and you’ll have that.”

  Shooter finished in less than 12 minutes. Will watched the whole process without saying a word, but was still impressed with the level of skill the gunsmith was displaying. Will bought sixty 9mm Militech-branded tungsten-core penetrators and walked out satisfied that he could put down the next walking tank he encountered (after hitting it a couple of times with rocket launchers, maybe).

  New toys in hand, Will made his way back to his apartment. He was already feeling more dangerous when Regina called him about a stolen car.