In which questions are answered and answers are questioned.

“The mystery is killing me, Mary.”

She gave me a look that scared the hell out of me. She looked completely lucid and almost frightened. I’ve never seen Mary look like this before.

“No, answers are what are going to kill you, chum.”

Part XIII

“OK, you want the good news, the better news, the not so good news, or the ‘oh shit, I’m fucked’ news?

“It’s been a great day so far so how about the good news.” I replied as Mad Mary raised the diagnostic bed she had me stretched out on.

“You can get dressed now.”

“Which news was that?” I asked.

“None. I just want you to get some clothes on. You’re so damn toned and pretty it makes me sick.”

I smirked at that.

Let me describe Mad Mary for you: take a short, petite, mad scientist and give her flaming red hair and wild eyes. Then make her crazier.

That’s a start. Mary’s cute in that “little sister I just want to love and hug and protect” kind of way but doing so is likely to get you cut, shanked, stabbed, shot, or brain-fried.

She looked like a high-tech bag lady with her custom-made VR goggles, handmade vest with pockets stuffed full of shit, some of which I couldn’t identify, and cargo pants, similarly burdened with stuff.

“The good news is I believe you are who you say you are which means I’m not going to kill you and sell you to a parts dealer I know which, believe me, is a tragedy for my bank account balance. The better news is that you’re the most lethal looking person I have ever seen. You have shit in you I can only guess at which leads to the ‘I’m fucked’ part.”

I counted off the news on my fingers. “I’m pretty good at math and that’s only three bits of news. You said there were four.”

“Don’t rush me, damn it all. “

She sat down and took off her goggles. “OK, what happened to you should be impossible but the tech in your new body made it not so impossible. She’s not cutting edge, she’s beyond bleeding edge, more like, I don’t know, speculative edge. When the two of you linked you crashed into a VR signal you weren’t supposed to and that signal, designed to handle a tonne of data, is what enabled you to do your little brain dump into her cerebral cortex. At the same time you were able to make the connection work to your advantage and dumped her into the other end which was your old body. None of this would have been possible if she wasn’t who I suspect she is.”

“The mystery is killing me, Mary.”

She gave me a look that scared the hell out of me. She looked completely lucid and almost frightened. I’ve never seen Mary look like this before.

“No, answers are what are going to kill you, chum.”

“You’re scaring me, Mary.” I said quietly.

“You should be. I don’t know what you’ve stepped into but it’s big; bigger than a formerly fat Netrunner and his crazy scientist friend. Arisaka? They aren’t shit compared to this and that’s the problem: they’re scared too.

I sighed and sat down on the couch across from her. Once I cleared off a precariously leaning pile of spare parts. “Did they send the assassin after me?”

“No. They don’t have this kind of tech.”

I gaped at that. “Arisaka doesn’t have this kind of tech? What the hell is in this body and who does have it?”

“The first part is easy.” She began ticking down with her fingers. “Both eyes are cybered. It looks like you have thermal, IR, UV, and telephoto capability at the very least. Both ears have implants so I imagine you can hear well beyond human norms with directional hearing. You have implants running all throughout your brain and central nervous system so your combat interface links to your guns and bike, the data slots behind your ears, VR and WF interface, cyberfangs with nanite reservoirs, and general sensory boosting. With me so far?”

I nodded, feeling numb.

“Continuing with your CNS and wiring: you have general tactile boosting with pain dampeners, Class III Reflex boosting and a move by wire system so advanced that you can move and process at speeds many, many times human norm. Even heavily boosted Solos can’t touch you. Add to that an internal gyroscope in your pelvis and you’ll put cats to shame when it comes to staying on your feet.”

“Yeah, I noticed that when I almost fell standing up in my flat. I recovered without conscious thought. It was pretty impressive.”

“It should be. That alone is about one hundred k in new bucks. You have full body, nano-dermal plating that is sufficient to stop small arms, nanites reinforced bones and muscles with myomer-fascial implants, giving you about four times the strength of a non-augmented human. You have implanted class two Ripper blades in all ten fingers and three extra organs that look like they produce nanites which, unless I miss my guess, are there to heal tissue and tech damage you may endure.”

I shook my head. “This isn’t possible. With this much hardware she should have been a Class A cyberpsycho but she, and I, aren’t.”

“You told me earlier you felt kind of numb, right? You have wiring in your amygdala and ventral hippocampus. I believe those mute your normal emotional response and prevent the formation of Primary Cyber-Replacement Induced Detachment Disorder.”

Shit. They figured out how to prevent cyberpsychosis – the human mind’s reaction to too much implanted cyberware. Too many tech parts and not enough meat parts play holy hell with the human brain. Every part taken out or replaced is a little slice of your humanity and ability to relate to others that’s gone and not coming back. Eventually you hit a tipping point and go into full psychosis with a berserk rage. You tend to die a messy death at the hand of the police who field special tac-teams to deal with insane, marauding, cyborgs that try and take as many people around them as they can.

“Someone wants that info I boosted from Access Tech and they have resources beyond anything I have ever heard of before. Beyond the most powerful of mega-corps is what you’re telling me.”

Mary just nodded.

“Who are the Enclave and the Union, Mary?”

Mary stared at me, not blinking; giving me that perfectly sane state that was scaring the shit out of me, even past the wiring in my brain. You have to understand: this isn’t the Mary I’ve known for years and years. The person looking at me now was a stranger.

She sighed and nodded as if she had just come to a decision. “You’ll know the Union by the name they went by about 20 years ago: the Datamancers Union.”

Part XIV

“Seriously, the street gang of Techno-Mage wannabes? That Union? They were kindehackers, as I recall, more into the flash and fun than real running. How the hell could they be behind this and didn’t they vanish about ten years ago?

“They did vanish about ten years ago. The Union I knew couldn’t be behind this but the Union I knew is gone, replaced by street ghosts and phantom whispers of unstoppable Runners and assassins, wraiths in the system so deadly they scared the megacorps and world governments.”

“Come on, Mary. I saw some of those kids with their tophats and steampunk crap, Victorian-era costumes. There is no way they could be remotely involved in this. The kind of tech this body has? If the corps and govs can’t field this shit than how could a former street gang?”

“Understand that what I’m about to tell you is what I’ve heard from people I consider pretty reliable sources, people that have since gone tits up or vanished completely, you copy? Someone is covering their tracks hardcore.”

I looked at her. “If they’re that hardcore how come you’re still drawing breath?”

“Simple: I used to be one of them.”