Private Eh, What's Up Doc?

[Hacks]

​

Somewhere Miserable,
Denon

A roiling cloud of green, acrid smog swept through the streets. A leakage from a nearby weather-plant had allowed vast plumes of pollution to escape its treatment facility. The undercities of Denon now tinted in a poisonous lime-green. Hacks coughed, she could taste burnt plastic in the air. Her eyes glanced up, past the irradiated fog, towards a clear blue sky so far above it almost hurt to comprehend. The ultra-elite lived there, in calm peaceful estates. She had been there a handful of times, but never as a wanted guest. Her eyes turned downward, watching where she walked. Brushing past spice addicts and drunks, beggars and street gamblers. Rodian eyes followed her path with curiosity but retreated his gaze back to his dice.

"Doc," she buzzed on a direct comm, leaving him a message, "I'm on my way over." She curled one of her two remaining hands of flesh, perhaps for the last time. By the end of the day, these limbs would be replaced by something superior, but less human. Every implant, cybernetic adjusted, pushed her further from her humanity, but closer to what she most desired. She was an addict. Not like the spice fiends or drunks in the gutters, no, she was obsessed with body modification. Pushing cybernetic enhancements to its most extreme. At times it came with great cost. It was a crave, an inch she so deeply wished to satisfy. It wasn't just her hands going, but her arms too, and then her legs. What would remain untouched was to be her torso and head, all else would no longer be.. real.
​

 

[Doc Painless]

The new clinic Xan Deesa had helped create and finance was coming along nicely.

It wasn't in a good part of town, of course; Doc Painless couldn't show his face in the safe, clean neighborhoods of Denon, or indeed many of the rough neighborhoods. Not if he valued his liberty, anyway. He'd been connected to Darkwire, branded a terrorist and a murderer in the wake of the Xopsaloff assassination, hunted across the planet. The smart thing to do would have been to run for the freeholds of Wann Tsir and never look back. Every second he stayed here risked exposure. If CorpSec spotted him, or if one of the planet's colossal network of security cameras caught even a glimpse of his face, he risked exposure. And that would mean arrest, torture, and a messy death.

But he'd stayed, hiding out in the putrid slum of Smogtown beneath District 9, because he'd hoped he could somehow help make everything he and his comrades had been through worth it. And it seemed like there was a chance, if a slim one, that it was working. Darkwire, scattered in the wake of their biggest and boldest operation yet, was reconnecting and regaining its strength. And he was out of Smogtown, thanks to Xan. His new clinic was many levels above the hovel that had passed for its predecessor, hidden away in an abandoned building. Local street gangs that relied on his medical services kept a lookout for CorpSec for him, and made sure that no criminal elements hassled him.

It was a big step up, both literally and figuratively. And he was grateful for it.

The Doc still had to be careful about taking new patients, of course. If the wrong person heard about him, it could easily bring the life he was building here tumbling down. He carefully vetted everyone who might want or need his services, though he never turned away anyone who needed life-saving medical attention. Though he'd had to give up on his oath to do no harm, taking up arms against the Corpos to save himself and others, he still did his best to hold to whatever scraps of medical ethics he could. Some days that was easier than others. Some days it required difficult decisions about who to trust and who to help, decisions that could shape the fates of many he cared about.

Some new patients, though, were easy admits. These were people who had been thoroughly vetted and approved by Darkwire itself, because they were members of the secret network. Admittedly, the one who had contacted him most recently straddled the line a bit. Poor Hacks had lost herself for a while, and had even attacked Daiya when the teen had tried to help, prompting speculation that she might have been compromised - or even killed and replaced by a doppelgänger. But that had proven not to be the case, and now the Doc was glad to help her however he could. Maybe it would be enough to get her back on her feet, fighting for the right side.

They needed everyone they could get. "See you soon," the Doc messaged back.

Hacks​

 

[Hacks]

By the time Hacks arrived at the clinic it was late and starting to rain. She shook off her jacket and laid it by the door and squeezed some excess water out of her hair. "You'd think they'd fix the weather system down here," she said to Doc, giving him a quick eye over, "But then again, this is Denon." Four arms flexed, two were her natural human-born arms, the others were older cybernetic implants. Dented and scratched from years as a career criminal. The only new flash of metal was her shoulder that had to be replaced when Daiya shot a fist-sized hole through it, leaving her organic arm dangling by slim strands of flesh and muscle.

The sides of her head were shaved where cranial implants had been inserted, the same that Doc had to fix when she was last here. Sharp metal studs protruded from her skull, but unlike her other cybernetics it was purely cosmetic. "Thanks for this, Doc," Hacks said, "I'm getting rusty and need an upgrade." It was a lie. Hacks was fine on the field. She just needed to reach that itch that lurked at the back of her mind, taunting her to go further, push her body to extreme lengths with unnecessary implants. It was getting to the point her body was making her sick after surgery, rejecting the body mods. She had heard of other mod-junkies dying under the knife when their organs couldn't take the punishment anymore.

"So, how we doing this?" She asked, morbidly curious as her eyes glanced down at her legs and held up her organic hands. There was a lot of dismemberment that was going to happen tonight. Darkly dreaming of a bloody nightmare. She found a seat and began to unlace her shoes and tear them from her feet. "So uh, got a gown for me or we doin' this birthday style?" she asked.

Doc Painless

 

[Doc Painless]

Hacks was... unusual. Brash, irreverent, casual about her own flesh... she was a Shadowrunner through and through.

Maybe a little too much so. Maybe pushing her own limits a little too far.

The Doc smiled at her mention of the weather systems, a tired smile that seemed to say yes, this is Denon... at least down where we get to live. He was used to it by now. After spending so long squatting down in Smogtown, choking on toxic fumes and dodging packs of stimm-junkies too far gone to help, he was actually grateful for a place that had relatively clean air and any weather regulation systems at all, even ones that were regularly on the fritz. That was how the Corpos wanted him to feel, of course. They wanted people on these lower levels to look down, at the people who had it even worse, and never up, at the rich fethers who had it so much better.

And who kept things bad for the masses below by consuming so many times their fair share.

The Doc's smile thinned at Hacks's description of getting rusty. He knew better. He'd worked on her once already, patched her up after that confrontation with Daiya and the crew, and he could tell that her augmentations were in excellent working order. After all, he'd made sure of it himself. But he didn't take it as a slight against him or his work; it just made him concerned. He'd seen cases like this before, cases where people had started to lose themselves to the thrill of bodily replacement. He remembered his friend Trannon Vark, who had given in to cyberpsychosis after his employer had loaded him up with far too many augmentations. He'd killed six people.

He was dead now. The Doc hadn't been able to save him. He'd been a good man, before all that.

"Whatever you're comfortable with," the Doc replied to Hacks, tearing his thoughts from the past with some difficulty. "I can do the work you've asked for while you wear a gown, if you like, as it'll leave your limbs bare. There are several on that rack." He indicated a row of clean white surgical gowns near his operating chair, an adjustable device that could move patients into sitting or supine positions with the push of a button. "But I promise that I've seen it all before, so if you'd rather not, that's fine too." Nakedness had long since ceased to be something sexual in his mind. Bodies that came to him were machines in need of repair, nothing more.

But before any such thing happened, they needed to have a talk.

With a friendly smile firmly fixed on his face, the Doc pulled up a chair across from Hacks. "Let's talk through this before we get started. Make sure we're all on the same page." Funny expression, really. Who used pages anymore? The Doc did his reading by downloading files that displayed across the field of view in his cybernetic eyes. But he digressed; this next part was important. "I've looked at your requests," he began, keeping his tone warm and unthreatening, "and you're asking for a lot in one sitting. There's a lot of promise and excitement in augmentation, I know." He flexed his own cybernetic arms, blinked eyes that no longer needed to blink.

"But what's the hurry?" he asked gently. "Why does all of this need to happen today? It's a lot for your body to take."

Hacks​

 

[Hacks]

Hacks unshouldered her jacket and began to remove her top as she sat on the edge of the operating chair. "Not like I'm worried about wandering eyes when you're amputating my limbs," she flashed a grin. It was a gruesome but pleasant thought for the mod-junkie. The Doc pulled up a chair across from Hacks and she got a feeling she was about to have a lecture. Her stomach sank down a notch, not that she couldn't handle a talking too, it was that she didn't like the idea he might not go through with the mods.

"Let's talk through this before we get started. Make sure we're all on the same page," Docs said with a warm smile, "I've looked at your requests and you're asking for a lot in one sitting. There's a lot of promise and excitement in augmentation, I know." Hacks' eyes followed his own mods as they flexed and blinked, demonstrating he knew what it was like to go under the knife for a mod. "But what's the hurry?" the doctor asked gently. "Why does all of this need to happen today? It's a lot for your body to take."

Setting her jacket and top aside, Hacks spread all four arms wide in a gesture of openness. The junctions of flesh and metal exposed themselves to Doc, where her lower cybernetic arms met flesh and anchored to her upper ribs with modified reinforcement. Her upper arms were still flesh, bar the shoulder Doc had replaced. "To be honest," she started, knowing she was bending the truth with what she was about to say, "I've got a big job coming up. Not your usual run-of-the-mill corporate hit. I'm stealing a holocron from the Jedi on Coruscant." It was true, but she didn't need the mods to accomplish the task. She was already well suited for it, and with Koda Fett and Ghorua the Shark, two of the most notorious bounty hunters in the galaxy backing her up, she didn't necessarily need enhancing.

"I can't offer more than that without breaking trust with the client," she explained, tilting her head left with a thin-lipped smile in a silent apology. She wondered if she were to tell the truth of the matter if the doc would just cancel on her, or worse, try to recommend professional help. "I've got a couple days before my flight to the Core," she said, "Should be enough rest if I get my hands on recovery-stims."

Doc Painless

 

[Doc Painless]

Doc Painless didn't like counseling. Give him a scalpel and he knew what to do with it. He could lance, he could snip, he could make a dozen clean incisions in a row. He could deal with horrific speeder accidents and the aftermaths of gang fights and cancers with terrible prognoses and horrible diseases bubbling up out of the abyss without batting an eye. Surgery was straightforward even when it was complicated. There was a science to it, a method with only limited variations allowing for the minor differences in biology between patients. But counseling? Talking people down, or up, or through? That was an art, and one with unlimited variations. And it required a hell of a lot of judgement calls.

"Well," the Doc said, smiling thinly as Hacks described her upcoming job, "the less I know about it, the better. But that does sound like a gig that calls for... exceptional hardware." He vividly remembered the last patent who'd come to him after tangling with Force-users on Coruscant: his friend Shai Maji , who had been mangled all to hell in a fight with an invading Sith Lord. Her injuries had been some of the most horrific he'd ever seen in his long and varied career, and he had been far from convinced that she would pull through... or that she would want to. The extent of the cybernetic replacement she'd required after that maiming had been more than he'd wish on anyone.

And Jedi could no doubt carve you up just as good as Sith if you stole from them.

But the Doc wasn't here to try to talk Hacks out of the job. If she'd taken it from the kind of client who would want a stolen Jedi holocron, pissing that client off was likely to be just as dangerous, and it wasn't his place anyhow. Runners would stop coming to him if they felt like he was trying to be their mom or their manager, picking and choosing the kind of work they were "allowed" to do... and this wasn't slaving or contract killing, so he'd definitely seen much worse. No, the real question was more related to his area of expertise: should he try to talk Hacks out of getting such extensive mods? Could he? It was a question that carried all sorts of risks one way or the other.

Suppose he refused, and she went and got somebody else to do it. Plenty of slummer street medics out there would give her the hack job she wanted, but they'd do a chit job of it. If he did it, at least he'd know it'd been done right, and her odds of survival and adjustment would be better. And what if he refused, and she didn't get the mods, and then got herself killed on the gig? That would be at least partly his fault. But if she didn't need these mods and he gave them to her, he had helped to feed a dangerous addiction, so that was the wrong choice too. Sometimes it seemed there was no right answer, no way to avoid hurting someone somehow. He'd seen it far too often.

Guilt and self-blame lived with him daily, lurking in the back of his mind like spice dealers on a shadowed corner.

"You know I'm not against voluntary cyberware," the Doc told her; most of what he wore these days had been voluntary, a sacrifice of his humanity in order to do his job better. "But folks pay me to be honest, and to look out for them in the long run. So I'll tell it to you straight: I think you're pushing for some big changes faster than is safe." He leaned back, regarding her with a firm gaze but a sympathetic smile. "And I know that 'safe' is a dirty word for runners, but here's the thing: if your body rejects these mods mid-run, then they'll make it harder on you, not easier." He shook his head gently. "And a couple of days? That's too little."

The Doc flicked on a holoprojector that stood across from the operating area, bringing up an image of Hacks's supine body alongside the augmentations she had requested. Lines of red (veins) and orange (muscles) and green (nerves) ran through the holographic body, a complex system that only hinted at the true complexity of a sentient organism. "When we do so much at once, there's a lot that the body can reject," the street medic told Hacks, trying to point out the truth without being patronizing. "Even with the stims I can prescribe, we're risking necrosis, internal bleeding, nerve damage... and mods just not working. Your brain needs time to adjust to them."

Ideally that meant weeks of physical therapy and drug treatment for work this extensive. "Can I talk you into doing less at once?"

Hacks​

 

[Hacks]

Hacks offered a slight smile and a quick raise of the eyebrows when the Doc swallowed her line about the Coruscant job being the primary reason for the mods. She slowly tilted her head back and eyes up at the roof as the Doc began to lecture her about the dangers, her mouth slightly opened in frustration. Teeth clenching. Her eyes barely registered the hologram, only wanting to avoid the reality of it. She knew the Doc was right, she just wished he wasn't. "I like the chop shops better, they're dumber," she said to him, a compliment to be sure - he actually cared.

One of her four hands reached up to the back of her neck and gently scratched an itch that wasn't there. "I mean, I guess?" she said, not enthused about the idea of it. Her brow furrowed and she sat up straighter, eyes looking into his, "I'm sorry, I know what you've done for me," acknowledging that he had saved her mind, and her life. "I just really need it Doc," she said, sounding more like the junkie she was, "Something, please?" A robotic hand waved to her legs, "We can skip leg day, if you think that's best, but my arms? I need them gone. I can pay extra.."

Doc Painless

 

[Doc Painless]

I need them gone. It was the kind of thing a body mod addict said, not someone who cared about the actual cyberware. Maybe the Doc ought to just tell her no, absolutely not. Hacks needed to get her head right, to learn to fight compulsions that were going to hurt her in the long run. And surely she knew that he had her best interests at heart; he was the one who had insisted she not be left behind even after she'd attacked Daiya, the one who had performed life-saving surgery on her as she lay dying on a table in the back of a hidden speakeasy. If he'd been a licensed doctor - a real doctor, some bitter part of him chimed in - he would've written her a counseling referral.

But that wasn't his reality. He could tell her no, ask her to go think about it, try to talk her through what she was thinking. She might even play along... right up until she left. Then she could walk literally down the street, find one of the shady ripperdocs that the local gangs had been using long before Doc Painless had ever shown up in the area, and pay one of them to do it. She'd basically said as much, her words echoing in his ears: I like the chop shops better, they're dumber. And those guys, they wouldn't look after her. They'd chop whatever she wanted chopped, plug in the cyberware rough and raw, and push her back out on the street, no follow-up, no adjustment meds.

He'd fixed enough of their botched "surgeries" to know the "quality" of their work all too well.

The Doc sighed. He'd already managed to talk Hacks down to half of what she'd come in here asking for; that was something, at least. If he did this, if he gave her what she wanted, he could at least do it safely. Was it the right thing to do? Maybe not. But down in Denon's underlevels, nobody's hands stayed clean. All too often the street medic found himself having to pick the best card out of a bad hand... or perhaps the least rotten muja fruit out of a spoiled crate. "I'm not asking for extra," the street medic told her, seeming suddenly tired. "I only charge what it takes to cover the materials and my living expenses." That had always been his rule. He was a service, not a business.

He didn't mind donations, though, so long as they were separate from patient costs. They helped him buy new equipment.

"What I want from you is a promise," the Doc told her, fixing her with a penetrating stare. His look conveyed both warmth and intensity, concern and firmness. "It's not a contract. I can't enforce it. But a promise means a lot to me. It's about trust, and that's the real currency for people like us." It was true. In a group like Darkwire, operating outside the law, engaging in the kind of trade that could easily get them all locked up or killed if anyone snitched, trust was everything. "So here's the deal. Promise me that you're going to take the post-op meds I give you, at the exact dosage I give you, morning and evening, for the next three days."

He leaned back, watching her face. "If you don't, your body will make you regret it. Probably mid-job."

Hacks​