Chapter 31: Gloria’s Business [Please keep reading]

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“Hello? Are you… uh, Mann?”

The woman’s voice on the other end of the line sounded tense.

It seemed to be her first time dealing with cyberpunks; she had even forgotten to explain why she was calling.

Mann frowned. “I’m not buying any damn heavy artillery, so stop calling—”

“Wait! I’m not selling advertising!”

The woman sounded terribly anxious.

“Then spit it out.” Mann was not a particularly pleasant man. Cyberpunks generally hated answering calls that came out of nowhere like this.

A decent person would send a text first to ask if it was a good time, rather than blurting out someone’s name like a clueless idiot.

How rude.

“Do I have to beg you to talk?” Mann said, biting down on his cigarette. He was already in a foul mood.

“Hey, listen. I contacted the fixer in Santo Domingo… He said you were well connected and told me to discuss a job with you.”

“You in Night City right now? The fixer said he hasn’t seen you in a while.”

Mann did not tell her where he was. “I moved somewhere else. I go wherever the money is. Nothing unusual about that… Now, tell me about your job, ma’am.”

“I joined a private clinic’s rescue team here in Santo Domingo. Usually… uh, I can…”

“Cyberware? I’ve got some decent cyberware weapons and the like. Are you interested in buying?”

The woman on the other end seemed afraid to raise her voice. She stammered through every word.

Mann had always disliked business partners who could not get to the point, but he could not bring himself to dismiss her when she was talking about cyberware.

Cyberware, weapons, and commercial secrets dug up by netrunners—those were all things that could fetch a fortune in Night City.

“Tell me about your cyberware.”

Gloria, pacing back and forth inside the laundromat, let out a sigh of relief. Many people had turned her down. Mann was the only one who had shown any patience.

“The cyberware all comes from people’s bodies. If you need parts, I can help you… remove them.”

Mann raised an eyebrow. “Ma’am, you never said you were a scav.”

“No, no, I’m not a scav—you know how many people die at the hands of the police or cyberpsychos. Some of our work gets outsourced to MaxTac and Trauma Team too, especially when the clients’ contracts have expired.”

“Think it over again… please.”

Gloria bit down hard and forced out those final two words, her voice trembling.

Mann hesitated. “Ma’am, you’ll need to send me some pictures of your working conditions. I don’t broker deals for organ harvesters. I need to know that you’re…”

Gloria hurriedly cut in, “Don’t worry. I’ll take pictures when I have work. I’m definitely not harvesting organs. As for the types and quality of the cyberware, I can’t guarantee anything. You’ll have to find a buyer who isn’t picky.”

Come on, this was Dogtown. What kind of sales channel didn’t exist here?

A faint smile appeared on Mann’s face.

He certainly had no objection to making more money.

Dorio saw Mann baring his teeth with the same sleazy grin he wore when watching braindances. She punched him in the stomach.

Mann shot her a sidelong glance, sucking in a sharp breath through the pain. “Good work.”

Pilar rested his head on one hand. “Well, well. Making money at both ends of Dogtown and Night City. At this rate, we could make a few hundred thousand eddies before Christmas!”

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Dorio grew interested.

“What is it?”

Mann nodded. “A woman from Santo Domingo. Says she wants to sell some cyberware and weapons. Doesn’t sound like a scav. We’ll wait for her to get back to us.”

Dorio lifted her chin and pointed toward the clinic.

“Should we discuss it with Mr. Lin?”

Mann nodded. “Since we’re all in this together, we might as well make money together. If this distributor is legitimate, there’s no harm in earning some extra on the side.”

After a long wait, Dogtown’s sky had taken on a layer of gold and crimson.

With every region exposed beneath the hole in the ozone layer, Night City’s sky was rarely so beautiful. Aerodynes streaked across the burning clouds while loudspeakers throughout Dogtown broadcast Hanson’s speech.

A rare moment of peace.

Night was coming.

Lin Yue stared at his palm. Once the Gorilla Arms’ data had been linked to his neural interface, he was delighted to discover that his status panel could read the quality of cyberware.

By now, Lin Yue believed the panel was essentially the same power framework as the game from his previous life. This world would not crudely divide everything into fixed quality tiers the way the game did, but the panel could still provide him with a quantifiable reference. Without a doubt, that helped him understand exactly where he stood.

[Gorilla Arms — Epic]…

Purple?

Lin Yue’s heart sank. At last, he understood why the ripperdoc had been looking at him like that.

For an ordinary mercenary, blue-grade cyberware was more than enough…

The doctor brought over several tubes of medicine. “People outside call this a suppressant. In Dogtown, they call it a blocker. Either way, it’s the same thing. Use it every day. Once you’ve finished the course, if you’re feeling fine and your head is still clear, you can stop taking it. If things don’t go so well and you still want to keep using the implant, come back and buy more.”

“Or have it removed.”

Lin Yue asked, “Was this taken from a corporate soldier?”

Costin had not expected the man in front of him to be so perceptive. “Yes. A Dogtown soldier—a former Militech engineer, a corporal. The Gorilla Arms on his hands were corporate issue.”

“Don’t worry. I washed all the blood off. I even cleaned out the blood vessels.”

He felt a little dizzy after the surgery. While resting, Lin Yue began sorting through his plans for the future.

As for the cost of living in this world, he could sum it up in a single word: collapse.

Before his reincarnation, Lin Yue had controlled a character in the game. Most jobs paid only a few thousand eddies, while even iconic cyberware cost just a few tens of thousands. It was sold everywhere and was still affordable.

Reality was different. There were scarcely any legitimate channels for military-grade cyberware.

The jobs Lin Yue and the others took in Dogtown paid reasonably well. Their three assignments had all been dangerous, but each had brought in around ten thousand on average—barely enough to afford modifications.

Most importantly, it was the money he had earned under the identity of Rin that allowed him to replace his arm.

An ordinary mercenary would have to save for a long time to afford a decent blue-grade offensive implant, since each one cost seven or eight thousand.

Their usual pay was only one or two thousand per job—sometimes just a few hundred.

In other words, having two or three blue-grade offensive implants was already considered quite impressive for a mercenary.

Only corporate agents, elite mercenaries, and high-ranking gang members could afford multiple purple-grade implants.

That was why a single arm, along with various repairs and replacement fees, had come to sixty thousand eddies. The repair work alone had cost more than ten thousand.

Dogtown had more cyberware channels, and prices were lower. In Night City, this arm alone would probably have cost around fifty thousand.

“Want to try it out?”

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Costin pointed toward the flood-control sandbags in the distance. “Help me carry two of them. You can get a feel for its strength while you’re at it.”

Lin Yue stood up and gave one a light tug. The sack was filled with wet sand and weighed more than two hundred kilograms, yet in Lin Yue’s hand it came up as easily as a grocery bag.

“The program is designed to use nanomuscles for progressive energy storage. You can find a wrecked shipping container outside and try it on that. Take care.”

Lin Yue carried the sand away, obediently leaving the examination room like a well-behaved fool.

Costin watched him go. His expression held both anticipation and helplessness. He smiled, then turned back to his computer.

Outside, Lin Yue tossed the sandbags aside. Rebecca spotted him emerging and waved happily.

Lin Yue glanced at the shipping container beside him and gestured for them to wait. Then he drew back his fist and struck the container.

The arm emitted a series of clicking sounds as it moved. A faint surge of exhilarating pleasure seemed to flow through his heart. The entire side of the container caved inward at once, ringing with sharp metallic cracks.

Lin Yue struck with his other hand as well—three punches in succession.

His final punch landed in the depression like a heavy cannon shell. The steel burst apart as if hit by an armor-piercing round, leaving behind a black, gaping hole.

Lin Yue stared in disbelief as he pulled his arm back out. In the distance, Mann’s crew looked at one another in stunned silence.

“Pilar, what kind of cyberware is that?” Mann had the unsettling feeling that Lin Yue might beat him in a face-to-face fight.

No matter how well-trained a person was, that punch was beyond anything human strength could produce.

Pilar craned his neck, apparently scanning the arm with his cyberoptic.

“That suicidal bastard probably installed engineer-grade Gorilla Arms on himself. Damn, he’s got guts!”

As Lin Yue walked slowly toward them, Mann studied his expression but saw no sign of discomfort.

“You okay?”

Lin Yue nodded. He clenched his fist, slapped his bicep, and gave them an utterly harmless smile.

A transfer notification lit up in Lin Yue’s cyberoptic.

[Transfer: 2,000 eddies.]

“Take it easy. Cyberware is expensive. You need to think ahead and keep some money aside. We’re not always going to be lucky enough to find work whenever we’re short on cash.”

“But… looks like you’ve outdone me, kid. I’ll have to get myself something serious too!”

Lin Yue was taken aback, then smiled.

This big, rough, dark-skinned man was probably worried that a young guy like Lin Yue would spend without restraint, so he had thoughtfully given him some spending money.

Lin Yue wanted to say, I’m not actually poor.

But that was simply how Mann was. He was the big brother of the group, always attentive to everyone’s state of mind—especially newcomers.

“So? You look troubled,” Rebecca asked tentatively.

Lin Yue was just about to refuse when Rebecca muttered, “Come on, come on. Worst case, I’ll pay for your drinks!”

In the end, everyone crowded into that battered graffiti-covered van. They sped through Dogtown’s cracked roads, where weeds sprouted from every fissure, racing toward the district’s most prosperous club.

…

Thanks to White Crow in the Black Forest for the 1,000-coin donation. Thank you!