Chapter Seventy-Three - The Black Market

Chapter Seventy-Three - The Black Market I arrived at home feeling kind of tired. Not badly so, but... yeah, I hadn't gotten enough sleep, and while work wasn't too strenuous today, it was still work. Still, the moment I was inside and checked to make sure the apartment was clear, I set a new Save. My first since yesterday, when I was tackling that goblin dungeon. Probably a good thing that I hadn't had to Reload, because I was sure that I was already forgetting some minor details. That was actually one of my smaller fears. What if I Reloaded too far back? If I went back to... say, the Save before I freed Ojou from that one portal with the undead, would I be able to help? I didn't have the same spells carved into me back then. The only thing I'd be bringing back would be some technical knowledge. That wasn't nothing. I was very slowly gaining real-life combat experience, and that was making me tougher and a better fighter, but it wasn't everything. Bah, whatever. For now... a nap. I slumped onto my bed, not caring that I was fully dressed because this wouldn't be the final loop. Mister Couchtop came over and settled down on my back, and soon he was making biscuits into my shoulders while purring up a storm. Unsurprisingly, I fell asleep, only to wake up at one-thirt-ish AM when Mister Couchtop started getting the zoomies. "Urgh," I said, but the nap had done some good. I Reloaded, and instantly felt a lot more tired. At least, physically. My mind felt a bit more settled, and that was good enough. I turned around and headed out. I was going to do a practice set tonight. One loop of guitar practice... one of French. Fuck, maybe not? Louise's words today, about my French... yeah, that shit stung. I thought I was doing pretty well. I mean... realistically, how many hours had I actually spent practicing in the last three weeks? Like, twenty? That was a lot for anyone, but it wasn't anywhere near the number of practical hours needed to learn a language. Plus, it wasn't like the real me, the one with memories that persisted through every loop, was picking up the knowledge any faster than anyone else. It's just that my days had more hours in them. Well, whatever. Next time, I'd be even better. With the guitar too, dammit! After that, I'd do some magic practice loops. Restore Stamina and Exhaust Senses were my current targets. I wanted both down by the week's end. Then... maybe some more research time? It was gonna suck because I was pretty damned tired. But like... fuck it, right? I wasn't going to improve much if I only ever tried to improve during optimal conditions... unless I took a nap at the start of every loop? No. No, that was a bad idea. The more time passed without me practicing my skills in me-time, the more my skills would dull. Anyway, right now, I had a goal. There was a black-market cyberware place that was going to get hit in... well, not tomorrow, but the day after, early in the morning. It was called Cold Solutions, and it passed itself off as a little PC repair shop in the outer city. I had one thing to look into, then two options. First, I wanted to see if the place even had any cyberware worth my time. So that's what I was going to check out today. If they did, then, I'd figure out what to do from there. I took a bus out, riding while keeping to myself, my workplace gun in a purse and my eyes on the people around me. Was I growing to be a little paranoid? Yeah, probably. But I also felt like it was a little wise to be? In any case, it took only forty minutes to get to Cold Solutions. The place reminded me a little of Full Auto Stranger Danger. Not so much in its aesthetics overall, but more in the way that it had a clear front that was hiding something more... legally dubious just behind it. The shop had some toughs hanging around the front. I walked in anyway, looking around at old tower PCs, some little portables, and a lot of electronics in glass cabinets with prices that seemed a little steep to me. I walked right up to the counter, where a middle-aged man was looking at something on his phone. "Hey," I said. "Hm." "I need good cyberware. Heard this was the place for it," I said. "Hm." I stared. He didn't. Yeah, I was starting to lose patience here. I reached over the counter and ripped the phone out of his hand, then carefully placed it on the counter. He jumped at the motion. I had been moving fast, and from the way he flinched, he was... not any sort of ranker. You could be reading stolen content. Head to novelhall for the genuine story. As an E-ranker, I might've been a little faster than a normal person. As a fledgling D-ranker, I was a little faster than an E-ranker. A little here and a little there added up, I think. "I need a place to purchase cyberware," I repeated, looking the man in the eyes. "Hm, uh, yeah," he said. "We don't sell that?" "You do," I said. "Now do I need to walk back there on my own or what?" One of the guys 'working' here, a big body-builder looking sort, came a little closer and started to stand taller. I glanced back at him, clearly not worried or afraid, and I think that might have cowed him a little. Or maybe it was my eyes. I caught a reflection of myself on some glass cabinets, and... yeah, there was no hiding them. "Shit," the guy behind the counter said. "Fine. Gimme five, hm?" "Sure," I said. He left. He returned. He didn't look happy about it. "Baker will see ya," he said. Baker, as it turned out, was the man operating the shop behind this shop. A gentleman in his early fifties or so, with a large baldspot and a few stress wrinkles. He had long, thin fingers, metal ones, and a bit of a hunch to him, though the white coat he was wearing didn't help. "Come," he said. I moved to the back, following him through a corridor with piles of stuff on either side of it. Electronics in boxes and unmarked crates. Baker brought me to a backroom. Here were rows of shelves. "Most is used," he said simply. "What are you looking for?" "Good stuff," I said. "Do you sell anything good?" He turned back to look at me. "sometimes. What do you mean by good?" "Top end, recent, jailbroken." "Recent and jailbroken don't go together," he said. "Then top end and jailbroken," I said. "I'm looking for a few things in particular." I wanted three bits of cyberware. Two of them I wouldn't buy here. My list was relatively short, otherwise. In order of what I wanted most it went: Optics - Because mine were kind of trash, and I wouldn't mind better retina-mounted augs. Sub-dermal armour - Because not dying was nice. Cochlear implants - So that I could keep using my gun without having a persistent high-pitched squeal in my head. Then the stuff I wanted but didn't need. That was what I figured I might be able to pick up here: Throat implant - For filtration, some had built-in rebreathers. Bio-monitor - So that I could keep an eye on my health and magic. Nerve threading - For faster reflexes. Skull-plating - Because I liked my head, and as long as it was intact, I could Reload. The sub-dermal I wouldn't buy second hand. Because ew. I was... kind of on the fence about trusting a back-alley doc to begin with, and sub-dermal operations were invasive as hell. The skull plating too. Also, nerve-threading was out. That was super delicate work. Optics too. The rest... I was more open to getting from here. If there was a fuck-up, I could Reload. Most of the operations were done with local anesthetics, so there was that. "Like what?" Baker asked. "I need some good cochlear implants. Mil-spec, at a minimum. Throat implants would be nice, and if you have a jail-broken bio-monitor, I wouldn't mind looking at it." Baker rubbed at his nose. "The cochlear... yeah, I might have something for that. Got it off a portal diver that... well, anyway, it's pretty good stuff. Sturdy. Pricey, though." His eyes flashed and he nodded. "They're Atyacus model F1R3. About three years old. Not jail-broken, but they could be. Don't know why you'd care with those. Ah, as for the throat implant, those are popular here. I have some pretty decent stuff." "They're popular?" I asked. "Factory workers, yeah," he said with a nod. "Reprocessing portal stuff. Lots of dusts. Lots of contaminants. Plus the air in this city... you know?" "Yeah," I said. I'd gotten a few coughs from it. It wasn't exactly clean. Nor was this place. It had a persistent mildew-y stink to it. And the smell of blood; couldn’t miss that iron tang either. "Show me what you've got, and your price range," I said. Two items off the list wasn't too bad. ***